A CyberGarden Party Leads to New Discoveries about Bulb Planting

Determining Which Way is Up

And here's something interesting! I noticed a few times that the bulbs I had laid down turned over on their sides as soon as I began to cover them. I didn't worry about it. While the bulb planted with its top pointed upward will show up fastest, even a bulb that goes in upside down will find its way to the top. It will just take a little longer.

I know that some of the corms and small bulbs can be tricky - turn them over and over and it's still impossible to tell which way is up. So it's good news for us to realize that being wrong is not the kiss of death.

Save Space and Effort
In small yards the layering technique is especially valuable. You can plant several bulbs in a single trench as long as they have different depth requirements. In one area I mixed Delft blue hyacinths, orange 'Gypsy Queen' hyacinths, yellow trumpet daffodils, and blue muscari in a single trench. Think of your planting area as a giant container and lay in your bulbs as though it were a giant container planting. If you've ever forced bulbs you'll know what I mean.

Thinking of my raised bed as a giant container planting also gave me the idea of layering some bulbs in the large containers that stay outside all winter. This is a great way to experiment with color and form combinations that you're not sure enough of to plant in the main garden areas.

Make Weeds Work for You
As for those weeds - in a way, for a little while, they were my friends. As I have been planting my bulbs over the course of several days (more like weeks!) it is sometimes hard to remember where I have planted already, and what needs bulbs. I would brush aside the leaves covering a patch of earth and try to see if it looked as though it had been disturbed lately. In some cases, it was hard to tell. As a result, a few times I started to dig my trench only to find that I had just sliced a daffodil bulb, planted a few days earlier, in half.

But if I spotted tiny weeds in the area, I knew I hadn't been there yet and that it was safe to dig with abandon

Plant Living Bulb Markers
One thing that

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