Friday, December 16, 2005
If you can dig, you can plant
Libba Wolfe
Libba Wolfe's column appears twice monthly in Extra.
Recent columns
Some gardeners operate by those regional "to do" calendars in the garden magazines. They plant their bulbs, at the correct depth, in October. They collect their leaves as they fall.
That group can move on to the comics page right now. I'm talking to the gardeners who are running, ahem, a little bit behind.
After enduring two years of red mudslides, we had a gorgeous stone wall built across the back yard bank. I potted up the perennials I had already put in and started buying more ground covers and creepers to make my wall look as though it had been there forever. I was hoping to get them all in the ground before winter.
But I've got to finish the cleanup first.
I know I should have let the crew haul off the unused stones, but I can't bear to part with a good rock. I figure winter is a good time to work in a rock pile. (No dealing with snakes, if you know what I mean.)
All the plants will have to wait till first thing next spring. I know they just put in a whole yard at the "Extreme Makeover" house in a snowstorm, but I don't have a camera crew hovering or a "reveal" on my schedule. The pots are lined up, and I'll have a few months to plan.
Bulbs
What about the bulbs? I'll have to admit I've never gotten to the bulbs before mid-December. In fact, one New Year's Day I put in a couple of hundred daffodils, and they did just fine.
As long as you can dig, you can plant bulbs. Tulips need an 8-inch hole. Hundreds of 8-inch holes in solid clay aren't easy and in half-frozen soil, they're almost impossible. Plus, our neighborhood deer eat them as soon as they bloom.
So you'd think I'd stay away from tulips, but I couldn't resist a bag of 200 when they went on sale.
This week I'm going to stuff some big outdoor pots full of tulip bulbs. They'll stay in the backyard till they start to come up. Then I can move them close to the house and hope the deer aren't brazen enough to come that close.
As soon as this layer of ice melts I'll get the daffodils and alliums in. The little grape hyacinths and windflowers I love can be tucked in without a shovel.
Whatever doesn't make it in the ground, I'll grow inside. I know lots of folks force amaryllis and narcissus for the holidays. I hold mine back till late January or February when everything is so gray and dreary.
Over the years I've experimented with forcing all kinds of bulbs. Tulips, daffodils and hyacinths can be potted up and left outside till late February. Bring the pot into a sunny spot and keep it watered. I scatter some grass seed on the soil and in a few weeks I have some springtime.
When's spring?
Even after 35 years in Roanoke, my internal seasonal clock is still set on an eastern North Carolina schedule. I'm always shocked when March arrives and spring doesn't.
So I keep a bag of tulip and daffodil bulbs in the refrigerator all winter. The third week of February I layer them with some rocks in tall glass vases. I give them sun and water. Some bloom, some don't. But they all put out roots, stems and leaves when I'm starved for green.
In the meantime, I'll take a break from wrapping presents and baking cookies. I'll bundle up, put the bulbs in, rake some frozen leaves and move some more rocks. I'll remember sweaty, dirty July yard work and call this invigorating. Chapped lips and cold toes are nothing compared to mosquitoes.
