Tag Archives: bulbs

bulbs, bulbs for shade, shade gardening

Bulbs that Bloom in a Shady Garden

Many of us garden in the shade year round. Others have sun in the summer but shade from fall through spring as the sun’s arc becomes lower. Do you look at the fall bulbs for sale and think ?Is there any hope that my garden might look like the pictures on the package come spring?? Here are some encouraging tips for you if this describes your garden.

Tulips growing in shade

If you dream about drifts of colorful flowering bulbs under your trees in the spring but didn’t think they would bloom in the shade, think again. Even if your entire garden is shady year round there is hope.

Some bulbs manage to grow just fine beneath trees-even evergreen trees. Many from the daffodil clan, including jonquils and narcissus will grow, bloom and naturalize year after year under tree canopies or other lightly shaded areas. Common ones to try are Golden Harvest, the classic, large yellow King Alfred daffodil and Dutch Master with pure gold flowers. Barret Browning has a soft. butter-yellow corolla and a pumpkin orange frilly tube.

Other common bulbs that will bloom in light shade are crocus, scilla, tulips, grape hyacinth, leucojum, snowdrops, chionodoxa and lily of the valley.

Gold Cup daffodils

To make sure your bulbs stand out in the landscape, figure at least 20-40 bulbs per drift. If your ground is hard or impacted by roots, be sure to pick up a sturdy, foot-operated bulb planter to make is easier to dig. Naturalizing daffodils is an affordable way to grow more flowers and they’ll come back every year without losses from deer and gophers.

Squirrels, mice and moles, however, are observant and crafty. Once they discover newly planted bulbs, they’ll assume it’s food. Just disturbing the earth is a tip off for them. Daffodils and narcissus bulbs are unappetizing but if they dig them up and leave them exposed with just a nibble taken from them, so much for any spring flower display. Protect your bulbs with wire baskets or spray them with foul tasting repellent, letting the spray dry before planting. You can also bury the bulbs with ground up egg shells.

Mid-season tulips

Planting bulbs along side a path makes for a beautiful look come spring. If you installed a flagstone or stepping stone path or sitting area this fall, now is the best time to plant groundcovers between. Low, sturdy types that can withstand some foot traffic include blue star creeper for regularly irrigated area and creeping, woolly or elfin thyme for drier spaces. Make sure you have enough planting mix between the pavers for the plugs to grow. Fill the largest spaces first and allow them to spread into the little cracks. Mixing groundcover types looks great as long as they have the same water requirements. Low growing pennyroyal and corsican mint smell wonderful when you walk on them as does chamomile, although you need to mow this one occasionally to keep it neat and tidy.

Whatever you bulbs you choose to try this fall, you will be happy you planted some bulbs come spring. And to help them bloom again the following year fertilize them at the time of planting with bulb food or bone meal worked into the soil a couple inches at the bottom of the hole. Mature bulbs respond to an early spring feeding with the same fertilizer.

 

bulbs, Easter Lily, fragrant bulbs

Easter Lilies in the Garden

Whether you observe Passover, Western or Eastern Christianity Easter when this time of year arrives I wait patiently for my Easter lilies to come up in the garden. The shoots are now about 6″ tall but they are a long way from blooming and I look forward to those huge, fragrant, white trumpet-shaped flowers. I pick up a few new blooming plants each year to enjoy now and celebrate Easter. It’s a tradition that marks spring along with decorating eggs, chocolate bunnies and Easter baskets.

Easter Lily aka Lilium longiforum

Easter lilies that are blooming at his time of year have been forced under controlled conditions to flower in time for Easter. This is a very tricky process since Easter falls on a different day each year dependent upon celestial bodies. Falling on the first Sunday that follows the first full moon after the vernal equinox, Easter can be any day between March 22 and April 25. Crop scheduling and timing is critical. The flowers must bloom exactly when they’re suppose to with no margin for error.

Did you know that over 95% of all the bulbs grown for the Easter lily market are produced by just 10 farms in a narrow coastal region straddling the California-Oregon border? Known as the Easter Lily Capitol of the World, the area offers a climate of year-round mild temperatures, deep, rich alluvial soils and abundant rainfall which produces a consistent high quality bulb crop.

The Easter lily or Lilium longiforum, is native to the southern islands of Japan where it was grown and exported to the US until WW ll. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941 the Japanese source of bulbs was abruptly cut off. As a result, the value of lily bulbs sky-rocketed and many who were growing lilies as a hobby here decided to go into business. The Easter lily bulbs at the time were called ‘White Gold’ and growers everywhere attempted to cash in on the crop. By 1945, there were about 1,200 growers producing bulbs up and down the Pacific coast from Vancouver to Long Beach. But producing quality, consistent lily bulbs proved to be quite demanding with specific climatic requirements. Over the years, the number of bulb producers dwindled to just the 10 current farms near the Oregon border. Even after the Japanese started to ship bulbs again after the war, they have never been able to come close to the quality of our US grown bulbs.

Easter Lily

Here’s how to make your Easter lily continue to thrive in your garden. For the longest possible period of enjoyment, remove the yellow anthers from the flowers before the pollen starts to shed. This gives longer flower life and prevents the pollen from staining the white flowers. Place the plants in bright indirect daylight, not direct sunlight, and water when the soil surface feels dry to the touch. Do not let the plant sit in water.

After blooming, plant your lily outside in sun or part shade after letting it acclimate to brighter conditions for a week or so before transplanting. Plant in a well-drained garden bed that has been amended with lots of organic matter like compost and mulch the surface with more compost. As the original plant begins to die back, cut the stems back to the soil surface. New growth will soon emerge but go dormant again during the winter. Next year they will bloom naturally in the early summer.

Easter lilies are a great addition to the flower border. Easy to grow, fragrant and hardy.

first freeze, gardening tips, hedge parsley, November garden tasks, pruning tips, sustainable gardening, weeds, wildflowers, wildlife gardening

November Tasks in the Santa Cruz Mountain Garden

Outside my window, the Forest Pansy redbud has started to display its spectacular orange fall color. There?s a suet feeder hanging from the branches so I get to enjoy the antics of the Pygmy Nuthatches, Purple Finches and the Chestnut-backed Chickadees all day long as I watch the changing colors of the foliage. Other than watch the birds and the changing foliage colors what should I be doing out there in the garden?

hedge_parsley_weed
Hedge parsley aka Torilis arvensis

Light weeding is easy now that the soil is soft and moist. The dreaded hedge parsley has germinated early with our October rains. With it’s spiny-ball seeds that stick to your dog’s fur and your socks it is not welcome on my property.? It’s invasive and a native of Europe. They?ll be easy to pull now.

Maybe I will plant a few more bulbs. The ground is cooling and there?s still plenty of time for them to receive adequate winter chilling. Come spring I?ll be happy I did.

california_poppies
California poppies

I just planted wildflower seeds on my hillside. I hoping for more California poppies. I see some of last year?s wildflowers have reseeded. Nature knows when the time is right. I spread the new seeds in swaths and worked them very lightly into the soil, first hoeing off some early weeds that would compete with them.

What not to do in the garden now? I don?t need to prune trees and shrubs at this time of year. Other than clipping a few well placed branches to use for holiday decorations, I?m off the hook for this task. Deciduous trees are still in the process of losing their leaves and are not fully dormant. Evergreen shrubs and conifers can be trimmed lightly but most shaping is done when they start growing in late winter or very early spring. Fall is not a good time to prune. Wounds heal slowly, leaving them more susceptible to disease. As a general rule, don’t prune when leaves are falling or forming. To avoid sap flow on birches and maples prune after leaves mature next year.

hakonechloa_winter
Japanese Forest grass in winter

The growing season is pretty much over for me except to enjoy what?s left of fall color and the ornamental grasses waving their seed heads in the wind. A lot of perennials are dying back but I?m not in a hurry to neaten things up. The seed heads left in the garden supply food for birds and other creatures while the foliage provides shelter for the plant in the cold and frost. Remove anything that has turned slimy or just plain unattractive but leave berries and seed heads for food and winter interest.

At this time of year my garden is visited also by Lesser goldfinches and warblers who will spend the winter and I?m doing them a big favor by not cutting back brown foliage containing nutrient-rich seed heads. Some of the reliable seed producers that I won?t have to clean up this weekend include artemisia, aster, coreopsis, penstemon, sedum, lupine, salvia, black-eye Susan, coneflower, phlomis, monarda, agapanthus and grasses.

Used to be the first frost in our area came about the first or second week of November but not anymore. Be prepared whenever it comes by moving frost tender plants under overhangs if possible or having frost blankets ready to cover frost tender plants.