Bulbs Ahoy
April 1st, 2010
That was sudden. Seems like we were just staring at mountains of white, and now the grass is greening, and the first main wave of spring bulbs is in full glory.
The sudden and sustained warm-up has really moved things along the last two weeks. Many bulbs went from bud to peak bloom almost overnight. No problem there, but if it stays unusually warm for too long, that can shorten our show.
Two of my favorite under-used bulbs are hitting stride right now: Siberian squill (Scilla siberica) and glory-of-the-snow (Chionodoxa forbesii). Both of these are short bulbs 4 to 6 inches in height that slowly spread, get better with age and make excellent front-of-border edgings late March through mid-April.
Siberian squill have blue hanging flowers, while glory-of-the-snow flowers are star-shaped and come in blue, lavender or pink. Most important: rabbits let both alone.
Hershey Gardens' tulip display.
If your yard is shy on bulbs, check out Hershey Gardens’ humongous bulb displays. The Gardens just opened for the season last Friday, and patches of various bulbs are already up.
The real eye-popper, though, is mid-April through the first week of May when the tulips open. Hershey’s staff planted 30,000 new ones last fall. Most are massed in patterns in the area above the rose beds – the same spot that gets replanted with thousands of annuals later in May.
Tulips are the queen of bulbs, but they’re hard for home gardeners because rodents often eat the underground bulbs while rabbits and deer are big fans of the flower buds in spring. Tulips tend to peter out after a few years, too, which is why Hershey yanks theirs after bloom and plants fresh each fall.
Don’t worry about covering your bulbs or even the emerging buds on your roses and other shrubs when the weather turns cold again (and it will). I got a question about that last week when frost threatened. One reader was going to go out and cover the hydrangeas and roses because leaf buds had begun emerging.
No need to do that. Most of our trees, shrubs and perennials are adapted to our start-and-stop springs. Buds open according to day length and sunlight as well as temperature. The more tender plants are later to bud out. Early-to-open species are the ones better adapted to cold. In other words, nature usually knows what she’s doing. It’s only when we get those really erratic curveballs that bud damage happens.
Now if you’re an adventurous gardener who likes to push the envelope by planting species that aren’t reliably hardy here (skimmia, photinia, palms, ‘Encore’ reblooming azaleas, etc.), you’ll need to take heroic action sometimes or just figure on replacing whatever wimps out on you.
The two main classes of plants to worry about in a spring frost are annual flowers and warm-weather veggies such as tomatoes, peppers and beans. Most of these will croak when the overnight low dips below 32 degrees. That’s why most people wait at least until Mother’s Day to plant these.