Blooming Bulb Garden

One of my bulb gardens in bloom at a friend’s office. (Photo by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)

Blooming Bulb Garden

Most years in fall, when spring bulbs are on sale, I pick up a few bags and make bulb gardens to share with friends mid-winter. Usually by early to mid-February those of us who live in Missouri are more than ready for spring and a little bulb garden offers the promise of more flowers to come.

This past year, I used crocus, small daffodils and tulips in my bulb garden, the bulbs layered so their roots could get nourishment as they grew. After watering and covering the bulbs with new potted soil, I wrapped them in a metallic wrap and placed them in a refrigerator to chill for 3 months.

Once the tips started to show, I started to pull them out and share as gifts for Valentine’s Day.

Usually the crocus bloom first, followed by the daffodils and tulips.

Here is how they look as they are getting started:

Bulbs after 12 weeks of cold getting ready to grow. (Photo by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)

Once warmed up, it doens’t take the bulbs long to get growing. I place them in an area where they can get sun but not directly, and away from heat sources so that the heat doesn’t dry out their soil.

My bulb garden growing but not yet in bloom. (Photo by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)

My crocus have bloomed in my pot, now waiting for the daffodils and tulips.

Daffodils bloom in my kitchen pot garden between potted begonias. (Photo by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)

Another way to bring on an early spring is to add a floral quilt on your bed, like Pink Applique Tulips. These tulips last as long as you have the handmade quilt on your bed and no watering required!

Charlotte

How to Plant Tulips

Darwin Hybrid mixed tulips in bloom spring 2017 in my new driveway retaining wall.

How to Plant Tulips

Tulips are planted in fall but most people think about planting them when they see them in spring in bloom. And yes, you can move tulips in spring, I will get to that in a minute.

Purchase tulip bulbs that are large, firm and heavy. Store the bulbs in a cool, dark place until planting time. You can usually find them for sale early fall at most garden centers, or through a variety of online suppliers.

Plant tulips in mid to late fall, when you are raking leaves and doing other fall clean up chores. Soil temperature should be 55°F or cooler.

Choose a planting location with full to part day sun, where the soil is well drained and easy to dig, never soggy. Loosen the soil to a depth of 10”. Also think about what wildlife may be in the area. Tulips are a favorite snack for deer and rabbits. Mice will eat the bulbs when there are mole runs.

If you have a lot of moles, plant tulip bulbs in soil in pots and bury the pots in the ground covered with chicken wire to protect them from being a winter snack.

How to Best Group Tulips

Tulips look best when they are planted in informal groups of 5 or more bulbs. Groupings of odd-numbered bulbs seem to look better than even numbers but I have planted, and like both groupings.

Space the tulip bulbs approximately 3 to 4” on center and plant them 6 to 7” deep. Use a garden trowel to plant individual bulbs or remove the soil from the planting area, place the bulbs and then refill the hole.

I invest in bone meal and add a sprinkling in the bottom of each hole before adding the bulbs. Bone meal provides a boost to the bulb roots as they start growing and makes sure they are strong and healthy when they are ready to bloom.

Moving Tulip Bulbs

Because people fall in love with tulips in spring when they are in bloom, there is a tendency to want to move them in springtime, too.

Although I don't recommend moving spring flowers in spring, it can be done. Dig the soil around the tulip roots and move tulip bulbs and soil to the new growing location. Do not dislodge the soil around the tulip roots or you will deny the plant the ability to gather nutrients and you will also disrupt the growing cycle.

Once moved, water well and, if necessary, stake the flowers so they will stand. I have found that once moved, it will take the flowers about a week to settle into their new home and stand up on their own.

The bulbs may not bloom the next year but if they are a re-blooming variety, add compost through the fall to re-invigorate the bulbs and they should bloom the following season.

Language of Flowers for Tulips

It’s been said that various colors of tulips have significant meaning when gifted: Red means love, white means I’m sorry and purple represents loyalty. Some of these "messages" are similar to the meaning of similar colors in other flowers, such as roses.

Regardless of the tulip variety, they are lovely flowers and deserve a safe spot in a spring garden.

Charlotte

Harriet's Orchid

This orchid from Burma is from my master gardener friend Harriet Bain, love the delicate flower!

Harriet's Orchid

In the middle of life's challenges, fresh flowers have always boosted my spirits. When those flowers are still on the plant, even better!

Last fall, a master gardener friend offered some of her orchids for sale as a fundraiser for our local chapter. Sight unseen, I put in my bid. Harriet is a wonderful gardener and if she had orchids, I knew it would be fun to have a start.

We waited until the last possible day for the hand-off, the day before our first winter storm was moving in. Besides two Australian orchids in large pots, she handed me one orchid in a small 4-inch clay pot. It's a dendrobium, she said, from Burma, her home country.

Once home, I tucked the orchids in my basement away from direct light. They were in the same southwest window as other re-blooming orchids so I left them there as I tried to identify if Burma had a signature orchid. When I looked up the orchids from Burma, I was delighted with the variety and possibilities, there really is something amazing about flowers that feel like a soft plastic but look so delicate.

No point in trying to guess what kind of flowers would be blooming so I settled for being pleasantly surprised. No, I wasn't going to ask Harriet, that would spoil the surprise!

Orchid Flowers from Burma

As I was watering my orchids this morning, Harriet's orchid caught my attention. Actually a flower had appeared, and then I saw a second bud. Dendrobium nobile Is "one of the most beautiful epiphyte or lithophytes dendrobium species found from the Chinese Himalayas, Assam, eastern Himalayas, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam that is found in tropical evergreen forest and primary mountain forest at an elevations of 200 to 2000 meters," according to Bhaskar Bora. Bora notes in his biography that he is an Indian businessman who likes to collect orchids as a hobby. 

I do as well. I have a little collection of phalaenopsis or moth orchids I have adopted over the years. One of the easiest orchids to grow, moth orchids are also a popular gift flower. I buy them after they have finished blooming and give them some "tender loving care" until they're ready to bloom again. It can take almost a year to get them blooming again so it is a labor of love. There is a wonderful feeling of accomplishment when I see the new growth and know I helped coax it into flowering again.

I was so excited about seeing Harriet's orchid bloom, I bought it a little special container to set it in and moved it to my den coffee table so I could enjoy it when I was sitting nearby.

Harriet's Orchid has two flowers, one in bloom and one in bud. I celebrated by buying a container.

Tip for Growing Orchids

Clay pots are fine. Actually clay pots are preferred for orchids because they wick away extra moisture that can easily rot roots. When we grew up in Brazil, I remember cattleya orchids that covered our backyard trees. My father watered them with a hose to get them hydrated but not too wet. The water easily fell off the large orchids clinging to tree bark.

Taking those memories, and experience, as a clue, I carefully checked the orchid roots every week and made sure I wasn't over-watering. When temperatures hit record lows a few weeks back, I moved the orchids up to my dining room. That was helpful when I lost heat for a couple of days, not sure they would have survived sitting on cold basement concrete.

Most orchids like indirect light, much as African violets and Chocolate Soldiers do. Besides periodically checking for bugs, that's all that you need to do with orchids. I do add a pinch of fertilizer to rain water once a month, and keep them away from heat and drafts. Short of that, there is little more than one needs to do.

Considering what we had just been through without heat, and it still flowered, I decided to get the orchid a decorative container. This little metal florist vase caught my eye for a simple whimsical reason, it has feet. 

Love the feet on this recycled container from a local thrift shop for $2 for Harriet's Orchid.

I picked the previously-owned container for $2 at our local thrift shop called The Community Partnership Resale Shop. The sale of donated items funds a non-profit that helps families with special need children so I shop there first when I'm looking for unusual pieces. My rule is I have to take a box to donate before I can bring a new box home but I waived that rule for this special occasion.

It didn't take me long to find this flower container, it was sitting on a corner of the store shelves as if it was waiting for me. I think Harriet would approve, don't you?

Charlotte

Apricot Trees in Bloom

My compact dwarf apricot tree in bloom almost a month earlier than usual.

Apricot Tree in Bloom

I have them all over my one-acre hillside gardens, compact dwarf fruit trees instead of ornamental ones. I have planted them for years in the middle of garden beds, in part for color, in other part for the fruit provided I can beat squirrels to it.

These trees provide regular-sized fruit on short stock so they are easy to pick. I have small paths that lead up to the trees for easy access.

I love the rich pink color of the compact apricot trees against the rich green of the vinca.

This year, the apricot trees are blooming earlier than usual by about 3 weeks. These two rich, dark pink, flower-covered trees lead to my small herb garden. One is shorter than the other courtesy of visiting deer that trimmed one tree shorter than the other one.

The blooms were particularly thick this year.

Compact dwarf apricot tree should be ready to set fruit this year.

As I was photographing the flowers, I wondered if my honeybees had paid a visit. A movement out of the corner of my eye answered the question as a pollen-ladden bee landed on a nearby flower.

One of my honeybees visits the compact dwarf apricot tree blossoms.

Hopefully this will be a good year for fruit yields from these trees courtesy of my bees.

Charlotte

2017 Year of the Daffodil

It's that time of year when I can pick handsfulls of daffodils to share with friends and family.

2017 is the Year of the Daffodil

Did you know that daffodil bulbs were introduced to North America by pioneer women who made the long ocean voyage from Europe to America to build a new future?

Those European settlers were quite creative with how they travelled. Given limited space for bringing personal goods, they sewed dormant daffodil bulbs into the hems of their skirts to plant at their new North American homes to remind them of the gardens they left behind.  The remnant ancestors of those bulbs still persist today in older gardens in the eastern half of the US, making them a part of our heritage for over 300 years!

Land surveyors at a federal agency where I used to work told me they also used to look for the yellow daffodil swaths as hints for old Missouri homesteads. Many Scottish Irish immigrants settled in Missouri as they were traveling west and their party hit some mishap - a broken axle, injured horse, sick child. Even those settlers carried with them a few bulbs as reminders of their original homes.

Daffodils are popular spring flowers where I live because they are also deer-proof. Daffodils belong to the Amaryllidaceae plant family. The official botanical genus name for Daffodils is narcissus, which comes from the Greek word ‘Narkissos’ and its base word ‘Narke’, meaning sleep or numbness, attributed to the sedative effect from the alkaloids in its plants. 

I have daffodils all over my one-acre limestone hillside, some gifts, others rescues from other gardens, few purchased. Although it's not always easy to dig holes, the bulbs do settle in and naturalize, even in the hardest limestone and sandstone hillsides.

This is a good time of year to mark where they are growing if you want to move them later. I prefer them scattered throughout the hillside so I can enjoy seeing them out of all of my windows.

And I can always find room for more. In my world, daffodils are "in" every year.

Charlotte

"What am I planting?"

The question came from an office colleague who was given her last "Secret Santa" gift from me wrapped in one of my favorite finds this year, bloomingbulb.com plantable wrapping paper.

Like me, she said she gets through January dreaming of her new flower garden. Rummaging through last year's leftover seed packets, pouring over new seed catalogs and cleaning pots are only a few January chores. The rest involves a lot of daydreaming, including what to plant where.

The plantable wrapping paper includes two sheets of tissue paper, one with a design, the other white, with flower seeds nestled in between. Can you see the seeds?

To plant, the instructions say to place the paper under soil; add water and allow seeds to sprout.

What kinds of seeds? It's an impressive butterfly mix:

Here's the same butterfly mix seed list from the plastic wrap around the plantable wrapping paper in the photo. One sheet 20 inches by 8 feet wraps 3 shirt boxes and contains 2,500 favorite butterfly seeds:

Zinnia elegens 30%

Love in Mist Nigegelie damascena 20%

African Marigold Targetes erecta 20%

Cornflower Centaures cyanus 10%

Gloriosa Daisy Rudbeckia hirta 10%

Cosmo bippinatus 8%

Plains Coreopsis tinctoria 4%

This looks like a nice mix of taller flowers best planted in a sunny flower bed. If butterflies don't mind, these would also make a great source for a few cut flowers!

Charlotte

Plantable Wrapping Paper

Between tissue-filled gift bags to brown paper bag wrapping with jute cord, decorating gifts is almost as much of an art form as the gifts, and well wishes, themselves.

In the US, annual trash fro gift-wrap and shopping bags totals 4 million tons, according to Use Less Stuff. Half of the paper America consumes is used to wrap and decorate consumer products, an approximate 25% increase in household waste from Thanksgiving to New Year's Day.

One solution, plantable wrapping paper. I didn't get around to making any so I bought this package from bloomingbulb.com.

The paper sheets have flower seeds sandwiched in between. After decorating a gift, and the danger of frost is past in your planting area, the wrapping paper can literally be buried to grow flowers, either in a bed or a pot. Instructions included on each gift tag.

 Now that's a gift that keeps on giving!