Fall Bulbs For Spring Blooms
Fall bulbs are, naturally, planted in the fall and flower in the spring. Many believe that they should be planted in the early spring, believing that the winter frosts can harm them. In fact nothing could be farther from the truth.
Bulbs, corms and rhizomes are all classed as bulbs for the purposes of fall planting. Fall bulbs need the cold of winter earth to prompt them to start growing and form a healthy root system, and a newly planted bulb will remain dormant until the ground temperature reaches 5 - 10 Celsius (40 - 50F). If you have an early fall frost and a mild winter, you will find bulbs starting to peek above the ground in January rather than March, and if your winter is mild, your bulbs will grow, but the roots will not be strong. The bigger the bulb, the more important a frost for their root system.
The cold of winter is essential for them. That is something to keep in mind when considering planting time, and with global warming sometimes causing mild falls, you might want to plant your bulbs later in the season - around November or December. Whatever you plan to do, you should make up your mind early exactly what you want to plant.
You have a very wide choice of plants and colors. You can get most colors from bulbs these days thanks to the wonders of hybridization, and there is no reason why your spring garden should not be a riot of yellows, reds, pinks, blues and purples. Add to that the snowy white of snowdrops and your garden should look great. However, keep in mind that not all of the different plants bloom at the same time, so choose carefully if you have planned a garden around that.
Possibilities are the snowdrops already mentioned that look fabulous when grown in large clumps, and then crocuses, lilies, tulips, daffodils and other narcissi, hyacinths and alliums. There are also irises and many others, most of which are available in a multitude of different colors. Towards the end of summer the garden stores will be full of them, and also the general stores, outdoor centers and even department stores. You will find pages and pages of sites online, and if you Google 'fall bulbs' you will have so much choice you will likely never want to stop looking!
Many gardeners like to color theme their gardens using fall bulbs, or to layer them with the smaller plants at the front and larger at the back. That is when you should check the estimated flowering times since you don't want the yellows coming out in March but the reds leaving it till June! The same with the sized planting: you could have a big bare patch in your garden while the middle sized bulbs leave it till May to flower. All of this information should be on the pack, but if not you can get the information online for your specific bulb.
The bulbs should be planted when the soil temperature drops to at least 10 Celsius (50F), and should be two bulb thicknesses deep. Make sure you plant them the right way up! They like a well drained soil that holds moisture, and if you add a thickness of compost below the bulb by digging the hole a bit deeper, this will provide the needed drainage, moisture and nutrition required for the first year's growth.
Old bulbs should be fed with a top dressing of a good bulb fertilizer, and clumps separated every now and again to promote more vigorous growth. Bulbs like a sunny spot in the garden, where they are exposed to about 5 - 6 hours of light daily. Under a tree or beside a wall that shades them from the sun are not suitable, and growth will be slow. Once they have been planted you just leave them and they will look after themselves. The fall bulbs don't mind frost and snow, unlike summer planting bulbs that should be lifted over the winter.
Anybody who would like a nice show of blooms in the spring should plant fall bulbs. You can design your spring garden in any way you want so long as you are acquainted with the bulbs, corms or rhizomes that you are planting. They are easy to look after, and are the ideal solution for the amateur gardener that wants to impress the neighbors in March.
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Garden Perennials Provide a Riot of Color
Garden perennials are popular with many gardeners, though there is a danger that the new gardener will over-plant them as they wait for those already planted to mature. The secret with perennials is patience, and if you want something to add color to your garden while you wait, then plant some annuals for the first year until the perennials really show their true colors.
A perennial needs at least a year before it flowers properly and that is when some gardeners get impatient. In year two, although you get some show of flowers, you will still not be impressed and might start to wonder why you chose perennials. That feeling totally changes, however, with the explosion of color in year three. That is when you will start to regret the extra plants you put in because the first ones did not seem to be doing anything.
Once your perennials are established it will seem very easy just to sit back and admire your work, but you will have no time for that. Perennials do not last for ever, and the definition of the term is one that lasts for more than two years. As some die away you will have to remove and replace them with fresh plants. You can even move them about the garden since perennials are ideal for replanting. In fact many gardeners have a space set aside for starting off new garden perennials in a variety of colors that they can use later for filling in gaps as plants die. This avoids them having to wait until the plants mature.
It is not easy to fill an empty space in a row of flowers if you have to wait two or three years for a plant to flower, and a small personal nursery area is a good idea and quite common with gardeners experienced in growing perennials. Others fill spaces with annuals, but they never quite look as though they belong.
Growing perennials takes experience. Perhaps not so much the growing, but the planning and envisaging what your garden will look like in three years time. It is not easy to space your plants correctly since they will spread out a great deal more than you think as they mature, and some such as asters, can continue to bloom when others have died out. The overall plan of a garden should take several aspects of the plant into consideration, such as height, spread, color, whether it prefers shade or direct sunlight, and how long they flower for.
As mentioned, the aster can bloom past September into the fall, and you don't want to plant asters together with summer blooms that die off in August. You will then be left with some asters all on their own and, while asters are lovely plants, it might not be as you planned it. Perennials can bloom right through from April to November, sometimes even later depending on the climate and the weather conditions.
Let's face it, there are more to perennials than most people think, and they include plants as diverse as rhubarb, daffodils, and other bulbs, corms and rhizomes, lilac and even dandelions and daisies. You also have the soft, fleshy stemmed herbaceous perennials such as the peony. These have fragrant flowers, the smell of which varies between varieties and come in reds, pinks and whites.
The beautiful blue cornflower, also known as bachelor's buttons because they were once worn by bachelors when they went courting, are excellent flowers for cutting, and the lovely flower belies the foliage that can get quite ugly as it ages. For this reason cornflower is best grown among other flowers with sufficient foliage to hide that of the cornflower.
Lobelia plants can be either annuals or perennials, and the delicate purple lobelia is very attractive. Although most people generally regard lobelia as being a purple plant, there are over 350 species of lobelia, and the short-lived perennial lobelia cardinalis has red flowers that appear in the summer through to the fall. The lobelia siphilitica (Azure Sage), on the other hand, does not appear till the fall and has delicate deep blue flowers. These plants prefer to be planted in clumps where they show their colors to best advantage.
The geranium is another garden perennial that looks good in borders, beside ponds or even as ground cover. The true geranium is a hardy perennial with a fabulous range of red to blue colors that love well drained soil and shady conditions. There are over 300 species, and new hybrids coming along all the time.
In summary, garden perennials have to be understood, and once the gardener new to them gets past the first two or three years then he or she will be hooked. They provide a riot of color to any garden, large or small, and are able to be easily moved and transplanted to suit your particular planning needs.
