BULB PLANTING TIME
In the local hardware store they go to great lengths to ask you what exactly you are doing and explain what you need, sometimes changing the item that you may have already selected.
But getting back to the subject of planting bulbs, and please be sure and purchase them in the garden centre. This year try some of the species Crocus and small daffodils (Narcissus) If you have a small town garden. The large flowered varieties look ridiculous in a small space and are really only for planting in drifts in large gardens. You can get a good range of the small flowered varieties now and once planted will provide you with years of enjoyment. I like to plant all my bulbs before the middle of September if possible, starting with the species crocus. One of my favourites is cream beauty, a Crysanthus Hybrid producing rich cream flowers with pale greenish brown bases and deep golden yellow throats. I usually plant these in-groups of five and they clump up nicely and flower for years without any attention. E.A. Bowles is another good one that produces compact rich lemon yellow flowers the outer petals with bronze green bases and purple feathering. Gipsy Girl a favourite with everyone, producing large yellow flowers with purple stripes and feathering outside, flowers for ages every spring and is one I would hate to be without.
Narcissus cylamineus is my favourite of the daffodil group but it is slow to bulk up with me for some reason and only seems to produce one or two offsets each year. Narcissus Bulbocodium seeds all over the garden, so no need to plant any of those. One of the seedlings last spring produced a nice very pale lemon flower, so I potted it up and put it in the new bulb frame. With luck it will hold its form next spring and I will have got myself a nice new Narcissus colour break with no effort at all on my part.
While at the bulb frame I noticed that the new growth on the N.Romieuxii hybrids was already four inches high, just as well that I potted them on early. I have discovered that some bulbs actually take a very short rest in the summer, the foliage may have died down to fool us into thinking that they are asleep, but they are working away underground making new roots. So don't lift and dry of your bulbs unless it
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