Bulb Basics
Choose carefully to make the most of these perennial favorites
By Bonnie Blodgett
Curiously, the only other catalog that has the effect of a revival meeting on me is Ikea’s. While its customer is the sophisticated but destitute modernist who finds in its pages everything he or she otherwise couldn’t possibly afford, White Flower Farm targets society matrons (and wannabes) who have only to admire and delegate. Instead of splashing its pages with amazingly low prices ending in a pair of nines (“Only $5.99!!!”), Mr. Pettingill’s prices are delivered in very small print rounded to the nearest nickle. In this year’s catalog, for example, there’s the tulip/dahlia “Double Play” combo, a clever package of 30 bulbs for $53.95. (The unassuming number alone inspires confidence, doesn’t it?) We’re talking, roughly, a buck-and-a-half a bulb. The package contains 25 Corps de Ballet tulips and five Last Hurrah dahlias. These are not cultivar names, but White Flower Farm’s own evocative labels for each collection—both carefully blended to create the most varied yet harmonious colors and forms of tulips and dahlias. You could have the same number of tulips and dahlias from Home Depot for far less, but then you would have to do the blending yourself, which (in Amos Pettingill’s humble opinion) is risky business—a bit like blending your own wine and serving it to Robert Parker.
Of course, even society matrons with full-time gardeners know tulips come in a variety of bright colors, heights, petal styles, and bloom times (early to late spring). Most amateur gardeners soon learn that tulips tend to shrink from one year to the next, and that wild tulips and certain daffodils actually multiply in an amazing demonstration of fitness called naturalizing.
Nevertheless, tulips are considered the ultimate no-brainer bulb and dahlias nothing but trouble. When I think of dahlias, I picture myself covered in dirt, digging up tubers (see sidebar), boxing them up in peat laced with fungicide, and then trying to find a place that is neither too hot nor too cold to put them until it’s warm enough outside to replant them.
The White Flower Farm “Double Play” collection subliminally informs its customers all that is really quite unnecessary. They ought to treat dahlias the way they do tulips—as annuals—and by the way, why not lighten the gardener’s workload by buying tulips and dahlias in groups guaranteed to look good when planted together? Long after the tulips are done flowering, their withering foliage will be neatly masked by the bushy new leaves of the dahlias, which will begin blooming, well . . . in due time. (You can always shove a few annuals in amongst the dahlia foliage if you must have mid-summer color. Examples of such combinations are sprinkled liberally through the catalog, with annuals themselves offered for sale in “Annuals a la Carte.”
Whether or not you take the bait and place an order, think what you’ve learned:
1) Spring bulbs are essentially no different than summer and fall bulbs.
2) Bulbs are usually perennials.
3) After blooming, bulbs still need their leaves to absorb the energy required for next year’s show (this is not important if you don’t care about next year).
4) Just because a plant can be kept alive (i.e., my usual dahlia routine) doesn’t mean it’s worth the effort.
5) All planting schemes should take into account seasonal bloom times.
I would add to those lessons so artfully conveyed in the White Flower Farm catalog a few I’ve learned from my own experience.
Bulb purveyors, of course, hope you’ll buy fresh bulbs every year. Should you take the less costly route and encourage them to come back next season, you can disguise those withering leaves easily enough without spending a nickel on annuals.
Plant clumping perennials nearby and their foliage will cover the eyesore. Some handy cover-up artists are hostas, sweet woodruff, lady’s mantle, and hardy geraniums. Biennial forget-me-nots hide and enhance; their tiny, pale blue flowers look wonderful against the soft pinks and yellows of spring bulbs and early blooming perennials. While they technically live just two years, they readily reseed, unless you prevent seed germination by applying corn gluten meal or other weed preventer, which kills off all seeds, not just weed seeds.
You may also braid your daffodil leaves, though it’s debatable whether this is really an attractive look. My opinion? Braids look great on Gwyneth Paltrow.
If you want to keep tulips (or any bulb, for that matter) coming back strong for two, three, or four years, buy a variety bred to cooperate, and plant bulbs carefully, digging the hole to the recommended depth and adding bone meal, compost, or a bulb booster. Fertilize again in the fall.
Beginning gardeners are often shocked when their bulbs get confused by unseasonable weather and begin sprouting fresh growth at the wrong time of year. Even when bulbs start growing in late autumn, they usually get the picture and give up before they’ve exhausted themselves and their chances of getting through the winter. If they don’t, dig them up and let them do their thing indoors.
Most bulbous plants look best in large groups or even massed. Planting a few hundred bulbs sounds extreme, but that’s what it takes to make an impact. Similarly, random colored clumps are nowhere near as effective as solid colored ones, especially groups of colored clumps that complement each other in shape and size as well as color. Bulbs of all kinds (lilies, daylilies, and dahlias, as well as the spring bloomers), more than any other type of flowering plant, look best on a large canvas. Leave the individual specimen for indoor bulb vases. Outdoors, think Holland.
As you prepare for another gardening season, look at your bulbous plants with fresh eyes. Remember that garden plants all need sun, water, and soil to survive and differ only in their methods of using these essentials. Learn how to capitalize on this convenient truth. You’ll save money and time, you won’t develop as many deep lines in your forehead as I have, and, who knows, your garden might end up looking just like a page in the White Flower Farm catalog.
When Is a Bulb Really a Corm?
The true bulb has five major parts, the basal plate (bottom of bulb from which roots grow), fleshy scales (primary storage tissue), tunic (skin-like covering that protects the fleshy scales), shoot (consisting of developing flower and leaf buds), and lateral buds (which develop into bulblets or offsets). Examples: tulips, daffodils, and alliums.» A corm is a swollen stem base that is modified into a mass of storage tissue. A corm does not have visible storage rings when cut in half, as a true bulb does. The corm contains a basal plate, thin tunic, and a growing point. Examples: gladiolus and crocus.
» A tuber lacks both a basal plate and a protective tunic. Examples: caladium and anemone.
» The tuberous root stores nutrients in an actual root instead of an enlarged stem (as with other bulbous plants). Example: dahlias, which reproduce from buds at the top end of the root or base of the stem.
» Rhizomes grow sideways. On some plants, this type of root structure can be very invasive. Example: lily-of-the-valley produces pips, which develop into new plants.
» Fleshy-root plants store nutrients in—you guessed it—their fleshy roots. They can be propagated by division. Examples: Peonies and daylilies.—B.B.
—Adapted from “Bulbs and Other Rooting Structures” by Ron Cornwell and Floyd Giles, University of Illinois extension specialists.
Bonnie Blodgett publishes The Garden Letter and is writing a book about smell.
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