After taking it easy last year , I now have ordering in for 357 medulla , with one monastic order as yet unsubmitted . Excess is always preferable , but that ’s not the only reasonableness I go overboard on bulbs .
My kinship with bulbs goes beyond their obvious utility : i.e. , you put the round thing in the ground and they occur up transform into various flowers . There are many other reason , and some of them have small to do with whether the bulbs successfully do up on schedule . Though I hope they will ( and they usually do ) . I ’ve assembled my justification into a inclination , to save the clip of logically weaving them together .
1 . Bulb catalogs are heaven . Colorblends put together their own tulip combination , give them names like “ Stop the cable car , ” and “ Romeo Foxtrot . ” It should enrage me that they tend not to put up the botanical name , but the bulbs are inexpensive and good , and I address tall hybrids as annuals anyway . Old House Gardens is at the opposite end of the spectrum , with plenty of historical information and references to the twenty-four hours of tulipmania . The Lily Garden always features characterization of the beautiful blonde Dutch women who move the joint ; I wish to ascertain on how small Juliana van de Salm is coming along ( hopefully I ’ll still be tell when she ’s a teen ) .
2 . Bulb - ordering takes the bite out of the waning summer . As I plan for the next give ’s flowers , it ’s as if I ’ve cut over winter — in my head at least .
3 . I force a mint of the bulbs , which mean I ’ll have tazettas in November and December , hyacinths in January , and tulips in February .
4 . Many of them go into container to be stored in the garage and brought out in spring , making them very portable as garden décor , or utilitarian as a generator for cut flowers .
5 . I hate fading electric-light bulb leaf , and purchase raw tulip each class means that I never have to see at it . The species tulip I buy as perennial have paltry foliage — and I avoid the fully grown daffs .
6 . Every year there are scores of fresh hybrids to try , or species type I ’d never noticed before . For example , this year Brent and Becky ’s offers the erythronim revolutum ( shown above ) , with white flowers and — interesting!—white and brownish veined foliage . And every twelvemonth , I wait longingly at the Allium , especially flavum , moly , and carinatum , with their tiny , disheveled blooms . lamentably , they will not thrive for me — lack of sunlight , probably .
7 . Bulbs have supplement ! I love to apply the antique Victorian hyacinth specs to force hyacinths , though they are getting harder to discover . They ’re old , but they ’re tough ; last year a bunch of them withstood the dusty temps in the root root cellar , and the body of water in them never froze . It ’s also fun to apply petite pots for hyacinth forcing , and dissimilar type of decorative stones in clear drinking glass vases for tazetta force . I can get all crafty with it . Obvious gift fodder here .
8 . As reason # 2 and 3 imply , this is how I finagle to garden twelvemonth - round , though there are still slack periods . But I can always go down to the root cellar to condition on the pot , ensure they ’re moist , and so on . Bulbs are the last things to be plant in the fall and the first things out of the ground in the saltation ; forcing shortens this wheel even further . With all the light bulb I have inwardly and out , I stay on connected with that cycle — even as the ground freezes around me .
