Little Secrets Of Growing Tulips And Other Bulbous Crops

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My favorite tulips in the flowerbed

Gardeners with a large collection of gladioli, tulips, lilies and other bulbs know how difficult it is to plant them in spring or autumn.

I also grow many bulbous crops. The most favorite are multi-colored tulips, hyacinths, daffodils of various classes and, of course, small-bulbous ones - muscari, galanthus, pushkinia, scillas …

To simplify the process of planting bulbs, I began to use the following method: I collect cardboard containers from chicken eggs, I make holes in the cells - with a nail or scissors. Then I lay out these packages on a flower bed, which is a box made of wooden boards. I already have several such flower beds on the site.

This shape of my beds is due to the fact that we recently acquired a very neglected area on which old trees, shrubs and perennial grassy weeds grew. We master it gradually - creating beds and flower beds. We do not dig the soil under the box, but lay a piece of agrotex or black spunbond so that it protrudes 5 cm outside the box. This prevents old weeds from germinating on the surface of the new bed.

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After installing the boxes and filling them with fertile soil, I lay out the egg packages there. Then I fill all the cells with sphagnum moss or sand and gently press one onion into each cell. After that, I fill the containers with bulbs with soil mixed with the necessary dry fertilizers, for example, Kemira wagon. During the growing season, cardboard packages decompose and serve as food for worms and soil microorganisms. In addition, these flower beds are well warmed up by the sun. If you have a low-lying area, raise the soil in the flower bed higher, then there will be no stagnation of water and soaking of the bulbs.

The soil applied from above depends on the size of the bulbs. Everything turns out simple, fast and beautiful. If I plant the bulbs in the fall, then I increase the height of the mulching cover and cover the planting with spruce branches. In the spring, multicolored varietal tulips, hyacinths, daffodils and small-bulbous crops bloom in my flowerbed compactly and at the same time.

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This is how my flowerbed looks

after stacking the containers

When using this method, it is desirable to take into account the early maturity of crops. If you want to immediately get abundant flowering, for example, tulips, then you need to place varieties of the same flowering period on this flower bed.

If you want your flowers to gradually bloom one by one, replacing each other, then you need to place flower varieties of early, middle and late flowering in containers.

Then your flower bed will delight you for a longer period. But one difficulty will arise: it is advisable to dig out bulbs of different flowering periods as they ripen, but they ripen at different times. If the early varieties are dug up together with the later ones, then the former can rot or become covered with various mold-causing bacteria.

When creating such a flower bed, it is necessary to take into account the height of plants of various varieties. Place tall varieties in the center of the flower bed, and lower ones along its edges, then the flowers will not cover each other.

After the end of the flowering of bulbous crops, which are ephemeral plants, i.e. their stems and leaves die off in the second half of June, the flower bed will look deserted and uncomfortable. To avoid this, you need to stock up in advance the seedlings of summer flowers by this time. By planting it on this flower bed, you will receive repeated flowering of other plants on it. For example, I plant marigold or nasturtium seedlings there.

Elena Kosheleva, gardener

candidate of geographical sciences, Volkhovsky district of the Leningrad region

Photo by the author

Also read:

An interesting way to plant bulbous crops in autumn