Growing Flower Bulbs

GROW YOU OWN FLOWER BULBS

When your garden begins its autumn transformation, you know it’s time to start planning, and planting, for a stunning spring show of blooms. No matter where you live, there are plenty of bulb varieties that will bring fabulous colour to your garden.
Bulbs can be planted in pots, garden beds, troughs and window boxes, and the best months to get them into the ground are March through to May. So order them now and get set for your garden’s most glorious season yet.

Planting Bulbs

• Autumn is the traditional time to plant flowering bulbs, but, depending on the bulb, the planting season can actually range from mid-summer (anemones, daffodils, ranunculi etc.) to early winter (tulips, hyacinths, bluebells crocus, iris etc.). 
• When choosing your flowering bulbs make sure they are healthy. If you’re new to gardening, just pretend you’re buying an onion (itself a bulb). Avoid dry, withered, soggy or mouldy specimens.
• When planting, take into consideration the amount of sunlight your proposed flower bed will get and buy your bulbs accordingly.
• Bulbs need well drained soil. An environment that holds too much water around the bulb will cause it to grow soggy and rot.
• Dig a hole wide enough to hold the bulb and between 2 and 3 times the bulb’s diameter deep (so, if your bulb has a diameter of 5 cm, you’ll need a hole between 10 cm and 15 cm deep).
• Place the bulb at the bottom of this hole, pointy side up. The pointy part is the stem of the plant. The roots will grow from the opposite end.
• Fill the hole in with soil and water. Simple.
• The deeper you plant the bulb, the longer it will take to flower. Therefore, you can stagger the appearance of flowers in your flower bed by planting your bulbs at different depths.
• As there is a long interval between planting a bulb and its emergence above ground, it is a good idea to mark where you've planted them in order to avoid disturbing them with other plantings.

Care For Your Bulbs

• A layer of mulch about 2 cm deep over your bulbs will help keep them cool and moist. This should be applied soon after planting.
• Water as necessary during the growing /flowering season. During the dormant period, unless the ground is very dry, the bulb can be left alone.
• When shoots begin to show above ground, administer bulb fertiliser, and again when the plant has finished flowering (to nourish the ground for next year).
• Bulbs are vulnerable to slugs and snails, particularly when the shoots are emerging. Protect them with slug and snail killer.

After the Flowers Have Gone

• Once your bulbs have flowered they won’t flower again until next season. The flower will die and fall away, leaving the remaining foliage of the plant to slowly wither. 
• These desiccating leaves can look untidy in a garden, but do not cut them away until they have properly died off. 
• Your bulb is still there, under the ground, and those leaves are feeding it the energy it needs to store for its flowering next year.
• You can tidy things up a bit by folding the leaves into a bunch and securing with string or a rubber band.

Lifting Bulbs

After their attendant foliage has died off, bulbs can be removed from the ground, or lifted, and stored in a cool, dark, dry place until next planting season. However, unless the ground is likely to become very hot during summer (in which case the bulbs will bake and die), digging the bulbs up is not necessary and they can happily be left where they are season after season.