Tip Toe Through The Tulips

     Are you looking for a shovel ready job?  Well get your shovel and get ready to plant those fall bulbs.  Get out there now and get your daffodil and tulip bulbs planted and you will thank yourself this spring when your garden is filled with bright colors, after a long, grey winter.  So much color from something that requires little if any maintenance is hard to resist.

  

     When choosing a place to plant your bulbs, avoid areas that tend to stay damp; excessive moisture will cause the bulbs to rot.  Loosen the dirt in the planting area, adding in some compost and peat for drainage.  Now the tricky part is to make sure you don’t plant your bulb upside down.  Flat down, point up.  Planting depth should be on the package or use this rule of ‘green’ thumb:  bury the bulb about three times as deep as its diameter.  Pack the dirt firmly, and if you mulch over the top, make sure you pull the mulch away in the spring because mulch tends to slow down the blooming.  Once spring has arrived and your flowers are done blooming, cut the flower stem to stop it from setting seed, thus sending this energy to building a bigger bulb for next year.  However, do not cut the leaves as they are necessary to continue feeding the bulb.  If you can’t stand the leaves you can always do what the English do, braid the leaves together, or just learn to live with them as I do.

     Tulips come in an astounding array of colors, shapes & sizes and can get expensive if you fall in love with some of the more unusual ones.  And if you have deer, plant daffodils, because tulips are deer candy.  Tulips only last three to five years, so plan on planting a few every year, to keep the bloom coming.  Daffodils, on the other hand, seem to come back forever and in greater numbers and deer avoid them.

     So between bastings of the turkey, get some bulbs planted, then sit back and watch Green Bay make mincemeat of Detroit.  Go Packers and have a Happy Thanksgiving.