Maid To Garden

In The Garden Of Good Living - November 2010 - Thinking Ahead About Blooms All Winter
by Pat Hendrickson

There are several varieties of pansies that bloom all winter in our climate. November is a good time to plant them. This is also a good time to divide and thin those plants in your garden which may be starting to take over. And it is a good time to start thinking about Spring. That is, which flowering bulbs do we hope to see popping through the leaves to cheer us up as winter’s final chilly winds start to die down?

Spring flowering bulbs and tubers can be planted through the first week of December on most of Delmarva. That is because it is rare that we get a sustained hard frost until then. Also, if you try to plant your bulbs too soon they may get confused and start to bud during one of our usual early winter warm spells. Bulbs need to be in the ground and “cured” by freezing temperatures for them to bloom in Spring.

In fact if you want to force bulbs and plant them in pots for cheery winter gifts, you can wrap them in newspaper and paper bags and put them in your freezer for a week before planting them in potting soil. A warm sunny window sill and some regular watering will then bring them to life.

Bulbs will do just fine with ground covers, like grass, phlox, and sedums. They will poke right through. But heavier plants like mums might prove too heavy and thick for your bulbs. So avoid planting them on top. All the usual varieties of bulbs and tubers do well here: snow drops, crocus, hyacinth, iris, peonies, etc. Tulips are well suited for our climate but they are tough to grow because they are prized cuisine for critters. Deer like to eat some of these tender blooms before they gave a chance to open.

The easiest bulbs to plant for spring flowering are of course the daffodil. In fact they look great naturalized in our lawns. The first mowing of the spring can be timed for the end of their bloom. Foraging rodents like squirrels, chipmunks and moles do not like the taste of daffodils. So they are safe bets to last and multiply from year to year.

I have some that I actually wish I could get rid of. They came from a previous owner of our house – who I think said she could not get rid of them either. Their petals are greenish and sort of shredded. I’ve tried digging up the bulbs and tossing them out, but I never seem to get them all. They’re too ugly to even take pictures of. But, every February their buds remind me that winter will be over soon - and that once again my yard will have weird flowers in it.

If you want native species in your garden, the most common one for our area (which is propagated with bulbs), would be the yellow iris. They like sun and do great in all conditions even bogs.

Check our hardiness map to see what zone you are in before purchasing bulbs. And buy them quick because some of the catalogs with popular varieties and exotics are already out of stock for this season.