Flower Bulbs

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Floral Jewels Of Regal Splendor

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The beauty and diversity of flower bulbs are famed for growing with no intervening attention from gardeners, improving year after year without being replanted or divided.

$There are bulbs in flower every day of the year, and no other group of plants is so adaptable or easy to cultivate.  There are many abundant selections of flower bulbs, ranging from some that flower in early spring to autumn, while others which are grow and have their first flowers by the first cold nights of autumn.

 

Why not make use these gathering rings for long-stemmed flowers, such as lilies or alliums. The ring opens and closes, so you can add support any time during the season without damaging stems. Keeps tall plants looking their best. The best quality flower supports you can buy Made of heavy-gauge, galvanized-steel wire with dark green powder-coated epoxy finish.  Available exclusively from the Gardener's Supply Company.

 

What is a flower Bulb?

Our definition of the term ‘bulb’ includes all plants which form swollen underground storage roots or stems to endure the dry or cold season.  The onion, which is the best known example, consists of the swollen fleshy bases of leaves.  There are also swollen subterranean stems, of which the potato is best known.  A third common type is the fleshy root, which may be either single or branched.  Some flower bulb plants like the Irises, have both bulbs and tuberous roots.

Wild flower bulbs?

A great number of bulbous plants are found in areas where the winters are wet and summers are hot and dry, and where the spring is short.  The ability to possess a food reserve in the bulb enables a plant to grow up very quickly in spring, before annuals and the other slower growing plants have had a chance to develop.  In the alternating wet and dry seasons of the topics, flower bulbs are common, but few can be grown outside in the cooler parts of North America and Europe.  Only some are resilient enough and come from high altitudes, with nearly all hardy flower bulbs coming from areas with a Mediterranean-type climate being a cool, wet winter and a hot, dry summer.

 

The best fertilisers for flower bulbs are those low in nitrogen, and high in potash and phosphate, such as bone meal, chrysanthemum or rose fertiliser.  The fertiliser should be either sprinkled on the surface without delay after planting, so that they are well incorporated into the soil.  Or it can be applied prior to planting, before the growth of the flower bulbs begins.  Most bulbs should be planted when they are dormant in early autumn (August onwards) for spring flower bulbs, or in early spring for bulbs that flower in summer.(Please click on image at right)

 

Planting flower bulbs

Exceptions to this are ‘snowdrops’ and ‘snowflakes’, which are best moved while in flower.  Snowdrops bought dry are often hard to establish than those transplanted while in flower.  Most flower bulbs require a well drained rich soil with a good deal of sand and humus.  A chalky soil, which is not very acidic is preferable.  Many of the Dutch tulips are cultivated in dune sand which have large amounts of shell to provide lime, enriched with humus, so that it maintains moisture and is well drained, as well as alkaline and productively fertile.