Flowering bulbs produce beautiful plants and flowers but you need to know how to plant bulbs to get the best flowers. Planting flowering bulbs is fairly easy but the main trick is to make sure your soil is prepared well in advance. With a balanced soil, both pH and draining, you will have an ideal underground situation for your bulbs to flourish.

You should choose bulbs that are mould free, and not withered or too dry. Planting healthy bulbs is very important. The size of your bulb shouldn’t matter though larger bulbs do tend to produce more flowers. Bulbs tend to like a lot of sunny so you should prepare a sunny area that gets at least six hours of sun a day. A few bulbs can handle some shade so chose accordingly.

Bulbs can be planted anytime as long as the soil hasn’t frozen. You will need to plant your bulbs before winter. Bulbs need this cooler time so that when the weather warms they wake up. If you don’t get cool winter temperatures then you should purchase some pre-chilled bulbs. To get the most root growth you should plant your bulbs before November.

Remember, when planting, the pointed tip of the bulb goes up! The pointed end is the stem and if it isn’t facing the right direction then it may take longer then you would like for the stem to emerge. It is tragic if they are planted the wrong way, as some bulbs are tricky to tell, but it may take a bit longer for you too see a plant.

You want to plant your bulbs at a depth that is about three times the bulb’s width, so in general about 6-8 inches deep but for very small buds only about 3-4 inches down. You can add superphosphate to the bottom of your bulb hole to promote root growth.

Sometimes animals may be a problem and eat your bulbs. It is possible to grow your bulbs in hardware cloth. The stem and roots can penetrate the cloth but the animals can’t get to the bulb. Some people say that sprinkling red pepper in the hole with the bulb as keeps rodents away.

Once you have planted your bulbs you only need to water them if you notice the season has been particularly dry. Once the spring has arrived you will be pleased with the small effort you took in planting your bulbs correctly and have a flowering feast for the eyes,

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 6th, 2008 at 7:45 am and is filed under Plants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.