Plant Your Spring Tulip Garden this Fall!

Garden Friend - I thought you might like to read my garden article that ran in The Denver Post about planting a tulip cutting garden this fall for spring bloom. 

Link to The Denver Post article, click HERE. The full article is below.

 

By Betty Cahill | Special to The Denver Post

October 10, 2023

 

Here’s how to plant a tulip garden — and keep the squirrels away

Now is the time to get those bulbs in the ground

Use the removed soil and cover the bulbs with a light layer. Then place wire or plastic mesh fencing over the soil so squirrels can’t get to the bulbs. (Betty Cahill, Special to The Denver Post)

 

Once the tulips and other bulbs have bloomed and been cut for indoor vases and sharing, they will be dug out and composted. (Betty Cahill, Special to The Denver Post)

Seeing spring flowering bulbs nudge through the snow means that winter’s hold is on its way out. It also signals that the new outdoor gardening season has arrived.

But that’s next year — several months away. How do you make sure that the bulbs you plant now, this fall, are going to do a superb job of ushering spring into your garden?

Here’s a primer on planting your own personal bulb garden that can serve you in two ways: visual spring delight (of course) and as a cutting garden to bring the bulb bling indoors.

Why plant a dedicated bulb garden

Tulips are part of the beautiful collective group of the zillion assorted shapes, sizes, colors and fragrances of spring and summer bulbs. They have been difficult for me to grow because the darn squirrels find and eat them no matter my good intentions and planting practices designed to prevent their dig, dine and dash enjoyment.

Squirrels love to eat tulip bulbs; they must be the right flavor and texture for a fall treat, sort of the dessert after a cheek full of peanuts and tree nuts.

My new tested “out squirrel them” system of planting a spring tulip-cutting garden has worked out well over recent seasons. Feel free to give it a try and tweak as needed in your landscape.

Credit for this creative idea goes to a couple I know who have a productive alley garden and often have extra room for other plants after the fall garlic is planted and the other summer-growing vegetables are harvested. One year they had some leftover spring blooming bulbs so decided to give them a home in the same bed where the garlic was planted.

It makes perfect sense to use all or part of a cleaned-out bed which generally lies fallow fall, winter and early spring anyway. The soil is friable, and since the bed is in a sunny location the spring bulbs will shine, literally!

A dedicated tulip bulb raised bed. Treat them like annuals. (Betty Cahill, Special to The Denver Post)

I took their idea and location — in my case, a completely unused raised vegetable bed. I decided to plant the least expensive, on-sale bulbs that were left on garden center shelves and through mail order. (They are practically free if you wait long enough.) My intention isn’t to keep the bulbs in this raised bed season after season since I’ll need the bed for vegetables in the next outdoor planting cycle. My end goal is that once the tulips and other bulbs have bloomed and been cut for indoor vases and sharing, they will be dug out and composted. Basically, I’m treating fall-planted bulbs as spring-only annuals.

I choose and purchase generic tulip bulbs to plant, ones that aren’t reliably perennial anyway. These bulbs put on their best bloom the first year after being fall planted. Often commercial landscapers treat tulips and other bulbs as annuals for this very same reason. If that’s not your deal (one and done), then choose and plant in areas of your yard where bulbs will remain, return year to year and spread (naturalize) from the group of more hardy tulips including Species, Kaufmannia, Greigii, Darwin hybrid, and Fosteriana, also called emperor tulips. Plus, there are many other bulb types to choose from.

More is better, so purchase several or scores of bulbs or packages if you can. You will want many bulbs for cutting over several weeks to make arrangements.

Tulip tips

Shopping local is the best and first choice; online is second, especially when stores sell out. Bulbs are often discounted in late October and November (not indoor bulbs, however, like amaryllis for the holiday season).

The same rules always apply for all bulb planting. Choose the largest, healthiest bulbs available, even the ones on sale. Mail-order bulbs, unlike bulbs kept on shelves in local stores, are kept cool and generally in ideal conditions prior to shipping — at least from reputable companies. I can’t guarantee this is true for all online mail-order bulb companies.

Bulbs, including tulips, are classified by bloom time so consider buying based on early-, mid- and late-spring bloom if this works for your planting schedule. When planted in warmer parts of the landscape, they may bloom earlier depending on the weather.

Prepare the planting area

The planting bed or spot chosen to plant should be free of any vegetation and roots from the previous growing season. It’s OK to work in some well-composted soil amendment if needed to improve drainage and add some fertility.

Adding fertilizer to the planting area is optional since the bulbs are treated as annuals and have all the nutrients they need bundled into themselves for next season’s bloom.

Outthink the squirrels

Use pest repellant in your bulb garden to deter hungry squirrels. (Betty Cahill, Special to The Denver Post)

Remove enough of the soil so bulbs are planted at the correct depth listed on the package. Save the removed soil for covering later, or plant to a depth based on the bulb size. The rule of thumb is three to four times the length of the bulb.

When touching and placing the tulip bulbs, always pick up any fallen tunics from the bulbs that serve as the scented “come-and-get-it” dinner bell for squirrels.

Place the bulbs in the bed spaced as directed on the package or closer. As extra anti-tulip scent insurance, sprinkle the area with pest-repellent   granules, which will not harm the bulbs.

Use the removed soil and cover the bulbs with a light layer. Then place wire or plastic mesh fencing over the soil so squirrels can’t get to the bulbs.

Lastly, add a bit more soil to cover the fencing, although this step may not be required unless the soil is needed for the correct planting depth.

Finish by adding a thick layer of shredded leaves for winter mulch. Renew the anti-squirrel granules as needed if they are nosing around.

Water the bulbs well after the soil is in place, then again when the final layer of shredded leaves is added. Water the bulb garden once a week if fall moisture is scarce and again in the spring when temperatures warm up and growth begins.

When the bulbs begin to put on spring growth, carefully remove the wire or plastic or just keep it in place if it’s not in the way of the emerging leaves.

Betty Cahill speaks and writes about gardening in the Rocky Mountain Region. Visit her site at http://gardenpunchlist.blogspot.com/ for even more gardening tips.