The bulbous plants planted in autumn include the popular tulips, narcissi, hyacinths, crocuses, sapphires, snowdrops.The slightly less known but equally beautiful ones include checkers, garlic, squirrels, ifeons, iris, kamassias, snowballs, anemones, wintertime.
Bulb selection
Bulbs are very often bought on impulse, when we are tempted by a beautiful color picture on the packaging.However, it is worth spending some time and doing more thoughtful shopping.First of all, we should pay attention to:
- flowering date,
- plant height,
- position preferences.
Flowering date
Bulbs for autumn plantings bloom from March to June. So they are 4 months. If we properly select species and varieties with different flowering dates, it will allow us to enjoy their view throughout this period.Once some plants have bloomed and become unattractive, others will only start to open flower buds.
Planting between perennials
In the summer months, bulbs go dormant. Their leaves turn yellow and dry. The onions should then be dug out and stored until autumn in an airy, shaded place. However, you don't have to do this every year.
It is recommended to dig up tulips and hyacinths every 1-2 years, narcissi, ifeons or lilies every 2-4 years.In practice, bulbs are dug up only when they get too dense and start to bloom less. To avoid empty spaces left by plants that we are not going to dig in a given year, it is good to plant them between perennials or small shrubs.
Growing perennial plants will effectively cover these places. Later replanting of annuals is a bit of a risk.We are not always able to precisely determine the position of the bulbs and we can accidentally damage them.
Tulipanowa discount
If you have a bed for annual plants, it would be a good idea to plant tulips around it.When they fade and go into a state of rest, we can dig them up and plant annual species in their place.The dug out bulbs are stored and planted again in the ground in October, after the annual plants have been cleared away.
In this type of bed, we should rather avoid planting late varieties of tulips, because you will have to wait longer before digging them up. The varieties of tulips are characterized by a special richness of colors and shapes of flowers, they differ in height and flowering time.When preparing a flowerbed of these flowers, we can create many different compositions.
What, where and with what?
Giant garlic and royal checkerboards look best in a well-exposed place in the garden, e.g. in the center of flower beds, planted several pieces next to each other.In turn, crocuses, sapphires and snow flakes look beautiful in larger clusters under small shrubs, trees or on lawns.Smaller bulbous plants, such as squares, canines, snowdrops, snowballs and tiny checkerboards, look attractive between rocks on rockeries and trunks of small trees.
Multi-species compositions
Recently, multi-species compositions of bulbous plants are fashionable, planted both in the ground and in containers, e.g.on terraces.Tulips, narcissi, hyacinths and sapphires are reliable species for such compositions, but of course we can use practically the entire offer of this group of plants.It is important to maintain the correct distance between the bulbs (it is always stated on the packaging) and the appropriate planting depth. The general rule is that the bulbs should be planted three times their height. In containers, we can plant them a bit more densely.
