Oops, we forgot about these bulbs!

Talking about bulbs....  

I was presented, last week, with this tray of tulip bulbs which were lifted last spring, after flowering, left spread out to dry, but were never cleaned and put away. 

Oops.

They should have been planted in September, or early October, but they were overlooked, and now they have turned up, and look! They are sprouting!

"Oh no!" said Mr Client, "What do we do now, it's too late to plant them, and they're Mrs Client's favourites!!"

"All is not lost," I hastened to reassure him, "we can still plant them, they'll be fine."

And they will.

It takes a bit more care to plant out bulbs once they have started to sprout, because you have to be careful not to damage the new shoot - you can't just throw them roughly into a hole and ram the soil back down on top of them.

Err, not that that's what I do, no, no, no, no, of course not. I plant them carefully and individually, standing each one up on the basal plate and gently firming the soil around them, to hold them in that upright position.

*grins*

OK, I admit it, I am very casual when planting bulbs in autumn, whether it's in pots for display, or in the ground; I have found, over the years, that bulbs have an almost miraculous ability to "right" themselves in the soil: and the few that don't will simply send their shoot out sideways then upwards towards the light.

When emptying pots planted by other people, I have found bulbs planted upside down, which have flowered perfectly well, even though their shoots had to make a 180 degree bend, on emerging from the bulb!

Bearing all this in mind, you can see why, normally, I don't worry too much about sitting the bulbs upright before covering them - in my opinion, it's more important to get them deep enough to be protected from frost, protected from squirrels, and for them to support their upper growth.

So if you have only just found a bag or box or tray of last year's bulbs, now sprouting, don't worry about it, just plant them out as soon as you can, either into decorative pots, or into the ground: just take care not to break off the delicate growing tips.

If these are bulbs which you lifted yourself, earlier this year (as opposed to ones you bought and forgot to plant) then you might find that you have a lot of small bulbs, as well as the main ones: these are the offspring of the original ones, which is always lovely to find - free bulbs!

However, they may not flower for a couple of years, so you might not want to plant them out with the bigger "parent" bulbs.

Any that are too small to be worth planting out, can be put into "nursery pots" or - in my case - trays, to grow on for a year or two, until they reach flowering size.

Here is my idea of space-efficient small-bulb storage: I've simply lined a plastic mushroom tray with an old compost bag, added a layer of fresh multi-purpose compost, then I lay the small bulbs out on top: when the tray is filled with bulbs, I tip on more compost until the bulbs are covered, then label it, and set it aside. I don't bother trying to make the bulbs "sit up" neatly, I just cover them in compost, and let them sort themselves out.

The whole tray then goes outside, and is left in a sheltered corner of my front yard, to receive rain, sun, frost, snow, wind, light, dark and occasional cat poo (*frowny face*) which allows the small bulbs to grow on, naturally, until they are large enough to flower.

However, we digress: moral of the story - it's never too late to plant bulbs, even if they are already sprouting! 

 

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