Guerrilla Gardening – Return of the Bulb
Sep 22nd, 2008 by Ealeal
While everyone else is busy anticipating autumn and then a sleepy winter, I am actually already counting down the days until spring. It’s not that I dislike the winter – the chilly season holds many a great thing, like my birthday, snow (in other hemispheres, but still), tweed coats on sale, hot cocoa with marshmallows, and some really awesome rubber galoshes. But thanks to a gardener’s “heads-up” from Dave Epstein of Growing Wisdom, I also know that spring promises me an intense burst of color in my urban garden.
Despite living in the middle of the city, I’ve been lucky enough to rent an apartment with two huge porches that happen to get quite a healthy does of sunshine, so slowly but surely Dave’s gardening videos and DIY spirit began to call out to me like a siren song – and I had to pull on my gardening gloves and get to work.
To me, gardening always seemed like something that requires a lot of time, plenty of research before planting anything, and of course, something that is surely to go awry on the hands of a city girl such as myself. But after raising my first crop of organic root vegetables in a raised bed on my porch, which yielded yummy root vegetables that kept my kitchen full all winter long (I think I tried almost every recipe for squash soup out there), I feel I am ready for my next challenge – flowers, or rather bulbs.
Surprisingly enough, right when the gardening season seems to be winding down to a halt, it’s the perfect time to get out there and plant bulbs, for an amazing zap of color come springtime. So this weekend I went a little crazy and headed over to the local market to pick up a stash of bulbs – daffodils, freesia, tulips and iris, all now tucked in my fridge for a brief blast of cold to wake them up before planting day.
It was quite hard to pick which bulbs to go with – with such a large variety of colors and aromas available for most temperate climate zones, the array is endless and tempting. One of my sure bets was the Narcissus, however, since I like the Greek mythology background this flower boasts – according to myth, this plant first reared its head where the Greek Narcissus had died, after having become so obsessed with his own reflection in the water that he gazed at it until, by some accounts, he fell into the water and drowned, and by other accounts, starved to death motionlessly.
If you find yourself working up a green sweat of envy while reading this, relax – you can unleash your inner green thumb as well, with minimal effort. In order to show off a hypnotizing color palette in the spring, you’ve got to put in your work now, and plant in the fall. Generally speaking, it’s recommended to plant bulbs in early to mid-Autumn, about 4 to 6 weeks before the first frost in your area. Since I reside in a relatively sunny climate where an Indian summer is the rule and not the exception, the local nursery experts recommended giving the bulbs I bought a cool shock by storing them in the fridge for a week prior to planting. Typically, bulbs prefer sunlight and moist (but not wet) soil. If you’re unsure about where to plant bulbs in your garden or yard, look for a place that gets at least a few good hours of sunlight, and make sure to perform a soil test to check on the PH levels. One of the best things about growing bulbs is that they can continue to light up your garden for several seasons – you can plant the leftover bulbs when the next season rolls around, meaning sustainable and reusable beauty for garden, indoors or out.
If you plan on using pots or containers to grow your bulbs, make sure that these containers have holes that allow water drainage, otherwise your bulbs will suffer from moisture overkill. One of the greatest advantages to growing your bulbs in pots or containers is that you will be able to move them around when needed, as opposed to planting them directly in the ground.
So what does it take to actually plant these babies? Take a cue from Dave and Growing Wisdom:
