By Staff
How's the bulb planting going? Right now is ideal. There's never a more perfect time to plant all those flower bulbs (tulips, crocus, hyacinths, daffodils and narcissi muscari, better known as grape hyacinths).
Or, how about a few anemones (Grecian windflowers), also a lesser-known perennial which is deer- and rodent-resistant), or a bulb called the Fritillaria? My catalog had at least 15 different varieties from which to choose, with bells of all colors, sizes and shapes.
Choose maybe a few emerus (foxtail lilies or desert candles), Dutch iris or how about planting a few "flowering onions?"
The allium in my catalog listed two full pages of possibilities.
Plant a group of, say, the "nodding onion," or a variety called Hair, Star of Persia, the giant Globemaster, Gladiator or White Giant.
I think I'm getting a bit carried away by all the different varieties from which to choose.
Mark my word, alliums, "the flowering onion," are going to be a hot item in the garden – and soon.
These bulbs truly do come back every year. Not only are they perennials (return and increase, but stay in one spot) they also naturalize (multiply and spread) in the garden.
The time is also ripe to plant garlic and shallot bulbs, too.
Let's face it, now with the cooler temps and all this rain, well, what could be better?
It's prime time for planting.
Perfect, perfect, perfect.
All those end-of-season purchases of roses, trees, shrubs, perennials and grasses (What! Don't tell me you haven't tried or didn't buy any of those deals, some are 40, 50 to 75 percent off) just because they look a little peaked and worse for wear. By spring they will be awesome.
If you plant them now, the deals and sales are out there, yet to be discovered.
Now is also the best time to split and divide your perennials. Here's why: they develop more quickly in the spring because they were settled in in the fall, as compared to newly-planted plants in the spring.
Also in the fall, we don't have things like the hot, dry summer sun, wind and insects to keep track of.
Plus, the soil is still warm from the summer, and a plant's roots continue to grow slowly until the ground freezes.
And the fall weather is more mild, with lots of cool, rainy days. We don't have to worry about watering.
As plants go dormant they don't need as much water as they did in the summer.
The end of the gardening season could really be only the beginning of a whole new season.
Hope you can muddle through my column this week, as I now have THE worst head cold.
I will spare you the lengthy description of my symptoms.
But now in September the garden has cooled, and with it my possessiveness. The sun warms my back instead of being on my head. No longer blindingly bright, it throws things before me into sharp relief and deepening color. The harvest has dwindled and I have grown apart from the intense mid-summer relationship that brought it on.
– naturalist Robert Finch