Gale Borger's Books The Books, The Author, and the Musings

Ah, tulips! I love tulips. It’s the one bulb I can’t totally mess up. You should have seen this outdoor wedding I attended last Spring. My sister Fred planted one side of the aisle and I planted the other.

While Fred’s tulip bed was packed with brilliant blooms,, mine were more than a little sporadic, and they looked anything but natural. Fred yelled at me, and it wasn’t pretty. To my humiliation, everyone took pictures from the opposite angle so they wouldn’t get my poopy tulips in the picture. “How could you screw up the simplest plant in the world, Buzz Miller?”

I had no answer. In my heart, I knew I was guilty of not digging the hole deep enough. It also turns out my tulips, were um, not placed quite right, and, er, probably took a little longer to find daylight, nor did I fertilize them.

 The way we did it was, instead of planting bulb after bulb one-by-one, we each dug a six-inch deep bed.  Mine looked more like a trench for a water main, but did I listen to my younger sister? Heck no!

Then we placed our bulbs in our beds (I thought the pointy side went down, so I impaled the bottom of the trench with a couple hundred bulbs). Fred spread bone meal and bulb booster over hers. Uh, I thought it was a waste of time so I just tossed the dirt in the hole and left. Good thing tulips don’t care how they’re planted, because mine came up anyway, only not as well, to say the least.

I also planted mine like little soldiers in a row, thinking they would look really cool marching down the aisle.

They didn’t look bad, but they didn’t look great either. Well, all that is water under the bridge, and I do much better now.

Of course this was all after the fact, and the whole town knew which side I planted. Good thing it was on the bride’s side of the family-the in-laws might have thought some black thumb lunatic set out to destroy their good time on purpose!

After that fiasco, I started studying. I had no idea how many colors tulips come in! I also learned that early, mid-Spring and late-blooming tulips will keep continuous color going until the early perennials come in. Combining tulips with daffs, hyacinth, muscari, allium, and other Spring bulbs can make a dazzling display.

People use tulips to landscape in Spring too. Because you have to leave the leaves on until they yellow, you will want to plant something like hostas or day lilies over them to cover up the empty spot and the withering tulip leaves.

As you can see, landscaping with tulips and other Spring bulbs can be stunning.  You can plant tulips by a river,

or add other Spring bulbs and make your own river!

Any way you look at tulips, they are a beautiful element in your Spring garden. Buy them in the Fall, and plant them 6-8 inches deep. Toss a little bulb fertilizer in the hole, cover them and water them in. Tulips do not need a lot of water after they die back after bloom time, so this solved the mystery of why my tulips croaked the first year. I planted annuals over my beds and watered the heck out of them all summer. This caused fungus to grow on my bulbs, and they rotted in the ground. An expensive, but valuable lesson.

Since then I got smarter (or I hope wiser) and chose cover plants that don’t need much water. I now place my soaker hoses far from that area.  When buying tulip bulbs, I troll through catalogs to find what I like.

Why not try blending colors or create blocks for a different effect?

Whatever you do, PLANT TULIPS! You will gaze upon your Spring beauties and be thankful you did.

I’m adding some of the places I check out tulips. Most all the sites carry tips, tools, and tulips, as well as many other Spring bulbs.  These are not the only places who sell tulips, and I suggest supporting your local garden centers, because they spend a lot of time choosing tulip bulbs just so your yard is the prettiest one in town!

http://www.colorblends.com/about/tulips/

http://www.brentandbeckysbulbs.com/

http://www.whiteflowerfarm.com/fall-bulbs-here.html

http://www.tulipworld.com/