Tulip Planting Concerns

I have realized that all my tulip bulb planting efforts MIGHT be a waste of time.  Spring-Flowering bulbs like tulips, hyacinths, and daffodils (et al) need "chill time".  In other words, they have to get cold enough for long enough to flower properly. 

Tulips require temperatures below 50F to begin to chill.  The colder they are, the less time they need.   This has been an unusually warm December here.  We have set a couple of record high temps, but that wouldn't be too much of a problem if it also got cold sometimes.

We have only had 3 nights below 32F here this month and are not forecast to have another until JANUARY.  This is almost beyond bizarre!  The average frist hard freeze here is usually in late October and the ground usually freezes a foot down for the Winter by early December.

I sure appreciate the warmish weather for the ability to keep working outside, but what is likely to happen next Spring is that I will have tulip plants, but no flowers.  After all this work, that would be a hard blow.  At least (as I read on most sites), that won't harm the plants permanently, just prevent blooms next year.

At minimum, tulips need 8-10 weeks of freezing ground.  And since that isn't likely to happen until early January, I am going to need a late Winter keeping the ground really cold into mid-March.  And THAT isn't the usual pattern here.

And I still have 8 cages of tulips and 8 cages of hyacinths to plant!  And 150 daffodils, but they don't need cages (being toxic to voles and squirrels) so I can just use my drill auger to plant them individually.  And from past experience, I know I CAN plant 150 daffodils that way in 2 days easily.

I think I will take the hyacinths and plant them in some large plastic tubs I have.  The voles can't get into the tubs and I'll cover the tops with wire mesh to keep the squirrels out.  I can harvest the bulbs in May to plant them properly

These are probably the last tulips and hyacinths I will plant.  The Winters are getting too short for them to survive.  I shouldn't have planted these, but I got all excited when I had an excavator remove the 6' high ridge in the backyard and thought of things I could plant there instead of grass to mow.  I love to see almost anything more than grass...

And I still have 200 crocus bulbs to plant!  I kind of got in over my head this year.  But better to try to much and stay busy, then to try too little and look back with regret at wasted time now, next year.

But I also have to say...  I've lived in this spot for 30 years.  I've seen the changes in the seasons as only a gardener/landscaper can.  The ground used to be frozen solid by the start of December.  Now it happens at the start of January (this isn't the first year of warmish weather at Solstice around here).

Anyone who thinks the climate isn't generally warming isn't a gardener! 

More Tulip Planting

Why do I keep getting involved in these projects that are nearly beyond my ability?  It is easy to plan things, I suppose, underestimating the physical work required.  Back in September, I ordered enough tulip bulps to fit 9 each into 27 cages.  Seemed like there was plenty of time...

(Some of this may have been previously mentioned)...

But then I learned that the bulbs wouldn't be shipped until early November.  So no point in doing anything before then.  (coff, coff)  Well, yeah, I SHOULD have made all the cages before then, but I thought that would only take a day.  I mean, I have good metal snips and a couple of metal blades for my jigsaw.  It should be like cutting cardboard.

WRONG!  The first cut into the wire mesh bends the cut wire and those grab the snips.  And the wire mesh is so flexible, it just vibrates along with the jigsaw blade to no effect.  So each wire in the grid along the cutting path has to be individually snipped from straight down.  I counted once and each cage required 277 snips!  After 4 of those cage cutouts (and forming the cutout into a cage) my hands started cramping.  It took a week to make 20 cages, and at that point I decided I better plant some and see how well they worked.

Well, digging the holes for the cages couldn't be all that hard, right?  12'x14'x10' deep.  I knew I was in trouble at the first stomp on the spade.  Now, this is a 100% metal spade with a newly sharpened flat blade.  Roots, rocks, clay.  I had to pound in an outline of the cage, use my leverage fork to break up the inside portion of the hole-to-be, pry out rocks, axe roots, and shovel out the soil one level at a time.  The clay stuck to the shovel and had to be knocked off.  For every shovelful I scooped out, I had to do several different things!  Each cage planting took 30 minutes of hard work.

Best I could manage was 3 holes a day before I was exhausted.  I can still do that kind of work at 65, but I don't think I would have done much better at 35.  Back was sore, legs were sore, hips were sore.

But just digging the hole is only half the work.  The soil below the hole had to be loosened so hole wasn't just a smooth clay bathtub and so the bulb roots could penetrate.  Tnen I had to sprinkle in some organic bulb fertilers and mix in in the loosened bottom.  Then I had to add some 1/2 compost 1/2 topsoil blend I bought a trailerload of at a landscaping place and mix in more fertilizer.  Then place the cage on the bottom and add more of the compost blend (you don't want the bulbs ON the wire mesh).

Then set the bulbs in the cage in a way that looks "natural" (If there is anything less "natural" than this whole process, I can't imagine it), then fill up he cage with for blend (for good drainage).  Then add another couple inches of blend over the top and rub it around to make sure there was no air space in the cage.  Then shovel some of the removed soil back on top slightly higher than soil level to allow for settling.

As a final gesture of organization, I bought a package of styrofoam plates to use as placers, wrote the name of the bulb (I have 4 varieties of tulips) on the plate with a marker, and stuck the plate over the spot with a 10" metal tent peg.

That's ONE cage of 9 bulbs...

Then because it has suddenly become randomly rainy lately, I had to cover the entire area with a large sheet of plastic (which I have) so the entire area wouldn't become a sea of mud.  Naturally, with the rain comes wind, so I had to surround the perimeter with rocks.  Which weren't enough, since the plastic was blown loose each of the first couple tries.  I finally had to resort to using 12' sq paver stones and REALLY large rocks and old pipes etc to hold it down.

And since the plastic cover got blown loose the first couple of times and I had to let the soil dry some (and some days when the plastic STAYED on after that, it rained all day so I couldn't really do any work there anyway).

So here I am in late December, having planted only 12 of the 20 cages.  And everytime I do, I have hand-cramps a couple hours later (naturally, just the time I am trying to prepare dinner).  Muscle rub creme helps, as does an aspirin, but only about 30 minutes after they start.   Meanwhile, I'll be cutting up veggies and meat,  and my fingers just lock into place around the knife handle or cooking pot handle and I actually have to pull them off.

ARGGHHH!  I would worry more, but that only happens after a day of hard tool use.  But it still is really annoying.

I've gotten better at the process.  Between the spade, the shovel, the leverage fork, and the post hole digger, I can get the hole dug out a bit easier and faster.  The spade defines the outline, the leverage fork breaks up the soil inside the outline, the shovel scoops out the loosened soil, and the post hole digger takes up the lower level of soil better.  But, mainly, switching tools uses different muscles so I don't get sore so fast.  I have it down to 20 minutes per planting a cage start to finish.

Fortunately, we don't have freezing temperatures forecast again until January.  But therein lays a problem.  More about that in 2 days!

Crocuses Border

While I was oredering spring floering bulbs (daffodils, tulips, hyanciths) for the new plantng areas, I also had the great idea of replanting the border to the older flowerbeds along the property line.  Sure, why not?  Like I had nothing else to do.  I get myself in these situations where work seems easy when I'm looking at plants online and "gee, how hard could it be to do that"?

ARGHHH!

So...  I used to have a border on the old flowerbed with alternating 1' sections of yellow and purple crocuses.  The voles ate most of them the first year.  But one section survives (for reasons I do not know).  So I want to replicate the gorgeous look of the row of alternating yellow and purple crocuses, but protected from the voles.

The solution is 1/2 "galvanized steel mesh wire cages buried just under ground.  OK, that requires building the cages, digging up the soil, and filling it back in.  It could be a lot worse.  At least THIS soil is well aged and loose, so digging it up is easy.

The real work will be making the cages.   But I am pleased to say I have solved that.  In design anyway.  I planned the cages 8" long, 6" wide, and 4" deep.  But then there was the problem of cutting the shapes out from the existing 3' width rolls of 1/2" wire mesh I bought. 

Well, I started drawing out shapes of unfolded cages.  You remember those IQ or SAT questions about "what is this shape unfolded"?  I got those every time.  Easy Peasy...  So I sat down with graph paper and started laying out the  shapes foldable into cages.  And because the stuff is a bit expensive and I'm cheap, I kept playing with shapes until they worked out with NO wasted material. 

Took an hour of updating software to get the sketch to scan, LOL!  My printer/scanner drivers always seem to be out-of-date...

I'll try to clean this of on some drawing program, but it basically means that I (or you) can make twelve 8" long x 6" wide x 4" deep cages from 5' 4" of 1/2" hardware cloth.  But it means I found a layout of mostly foldable parts and some few ends that need to be wired in place to make cages with NO WASTE! 

And I've made a form for the bending out of scrap 2"x6"x8" wood.  Its simple enough.  Cut a nominal 6" wide 8" long and screw and glue supports under it.  Or just screw and glue 3 stacked onto each other. 

If you have questions about that, email me at cavebear2118 AT verizon DOT net.

My plan is to have an 8" cage, 4" space for an annual plant like a marigold or zinnia, then another 8" cage along the entire 75' flowerbed edge.  So I'll need 75 cages for 75'.  12 cages per 5' 4" = 64' of the cage mesh, and I have 150' of it.  The rest will be used up in 18"x18" cages for the tulips and hyacinths in the new areas.

It all comes together, see?  :)

With apologies to The Beatles:  

"And, in the end,
The flowers you grow
Are equal to the work you do... "

Or to put it another way I read once,  "If you like bacon, you need to get down in the mud and keep the hogs happy".  Meaning that whatever you do, you can do it poorly or well.  Poorly lasts a couple years.  Well, lasts a lot longer.  Doing things well takes less work in the long run.