source for bulbs

[Vrstull]

This has no doubt been asked five millions times. So, . . . What is a good place, online preferably, to find bulbs. Particularly interested in daffodils (sp?) but want to see as much as I can. TIA. Vic [e-mail]

[Tom Engel]

[John McGaw]

"Late" is relative. I routinely wait until November-December to plant bulbs in Eastern Tennessee which allows be to buy whatever is left on the shelves at 50-75% off of October prices. Sure I come up with some strange stuff but if I'm just looking for something to naturalize it doesn't matter too much. Just got done planting crocuses and daffodils yesterday and mulching the beds this morning...

On the other hand, when I lived in Alaska I had problems with waiting until October because sometimes I would wind up with snowcover before mailordered bulbs were even shipped.

[Bill R]

I, too, like to wait until the spring bulbs are on closeout. I usually get my "regular" bulbs from Van Engelen (or John Scheepers) but then I shop for bargains locally. Last week I found a place that was selling crocus, a pack of 75, for $3.60. They only had 7 packs left so I bought them all. I also picked up some really nice parrot tulips. So far this year I have planted about 900 bulbs and still have all the crocus left to plant. I should get them all planted this weekend unless I buy some more bulbs. :)

[Zemedelec]

I think bulbmeister.com is still having a sale--I bought some narcissus and they look good. I'm not sure if the daffs are on sale but they probably have them. They have a wide range of bulbs, tubers, rhizomes, etc. zemedelec

[paghat]

I would prefer to set things out only in September & October because I feel like I'm getting them the proper head-start & all -- but I keep getting sales offers. Last week Bulbmeister sent me their final list of remaining stocks most of which is either too common or I already had it, but a few things were previously extremely expensive & much reduced. So I got a lot of extra Fritillaria pudica -- I'd wanted to increase the tiny johnny-jump-up patch earlier, but the eency bulbs were just too costly & i couldn't get EVERYthing. But now getting them for 75% discount, I couldn't resist. I spent about $55 for something like $145 worth of bulbs all told, none of it the sort of thing one gets from the local garden shop's bulb bins (though I did also find some things in local bins including a yellow grape hyacinth that I had never previously seen, & there it was in one of those "mass production" bags, three bulbs for the price of twenty of anything else). I'll get this final batch of bulbmeister sale-bulbs in the ground in a jiffy & I've no doubt they'll all be fine. In our mild climate November is in fact well within reason for planting bulbs. The main reason NOT to entirely wait for the sales is because so much of the most appealing stuff will be long, long gone. But if all one wanted was big standard yellow daffodils & the usual triumph tulips, might as well wait until they're marked down.

Three different bulb sources sent me e-mails of "close outs" but none so late or so cheap as the final bulbmeister list. Since before autumn I have been trying not to spend too much on bulbs this year -- but even restraining myself mightily I spent what must've added up to about $800 or more, most of it for full price ordered in advance of the season so that I wouldn't miss out of any choice. And spending that amount doesn't require losing ones self control, because it really does add up fast, & to limit a single given order to "only" $250 for just one order means passing on the greater majority of what one wanted, & ordering only ten each rather than 25 each of most things (& now & then, for something truly oddball & pricy, getting a measily one to three bulbs insufficient to create a drift). After making a list, one goes through it crossing off what one can even slightly bare not to have, lowers the numbers ordered from fifty to twenty from twenty to ten -- & even then it's a couple hundred dollars just from that one source & still two other specialists to check out.

But whooboy is spring gonna be thrilling. Actually, even autumn's been thrilling, as I added quite a lot of extra autumn crocuses (including some sprouted ones on sale a month ago) which have bloomed extravagantly almost immediately, & some things are autumn-grass-producing so they're already growing right now (the hoop petticoat daffodils are thick grass right now, as also a couple of onion-related flowers that produce grass starting in autumn & winter, & the "peruvian" scilla not from Peru has produced a patch of fat succulent blades). Nor is there any shortage of blooms; I didn't plant but two new cyclamens this season, due to being too broke to get more of the rarer forms which are all I "need" by now. But all the ones previously installed are such glories for autumn or winter flowers. But obviously its spring that's going to be the doozy of a time for drifts of flashy blooms all over the gardens.

One "good" thing about getting older is time flies by in a trice, so it won't feel like I'm waiting forever to see the spring flowers. It'll just be a couple eye-blinks closer to death for me, & spring will be here & crowded with species tulips, miniature & species daffodils, fritillaries, bazillions of snow crocuses, dwarf irises, sundry smaller species of flowering onions & a couple big ones, about ten kinds of muscaris, snowdrops, snowflakes, camas, glory-of-the-snow, &c &c -- even some temperate terrestrial orchids.

There was an autumn picnic & sale at one of the local nurseries that I went to last week, & all remaining perennials were 70% off. I didn't get much, as I didn't really want the remnant prerennials (& their "sale" of moldy bulbs for 25% off looked laughable compared to the sales lists sent me by the specialists). But they'd also moved a few woody shrubs to the

70% off perennial house, apparently for no better reason than it is hard to sell deciduous things that have gone dormant & have only a few scruffy leaves left on them. So I got a "Crater's Edge" azalea, a blue rose of sharon, a "Centennial" azalea, a very few other three-gallon shrubs that were on average $28-$30 each before marked down, but now cost no more than small pots of ordinary things. I think they made a boo-boo selling the "Crater's Edge" for the price of a daisy, because it's actually a species rhody of considerable merit & will be in full flower probably about March (conceivably in February, it's one of the earliest of all bloomers, before leaves come back), & it's not like they'd have to store it in the back corner as long as it'll take the blue rose of sharon to look really marketable again. That blue rose of sharon I'd wanted for a long time, but it's probably the most common temperate-hardy offering in the genus, & I couldn't see paying $30 for something that common even though just awfully pleasant; but for 70% off wadda-deal for something I had already wanted for the roadside low-maintenance garden.

I didn't attend as many autumn sales this year as I did in the previous couple of years because I am broker this year & I had spent more than I could afford just on bulbs, but if one really knows what the plants are, autumn's a good time to go flower shopping. The choices are fewer of course, but not everything left over will be low-end choices. Just because something has lost its "pot presentation appeal" it gets marked down, as most people make snap-purchases based on it being flowering at the moment of purchase, & sometimes the most interesting plants are the ones that do not show themselves to best advantage for very long in nursery pots. Some of the best of all shade garden plants only have a brief highly marketable pot presentation, & if not sold immediately will languish unsold the rest of the year. So last autumn I got a whole tray of jack-in-the-pulpits, plus trilliums & pink dogtooth lilies, all for ultra-cheap because none of their other customers are willing to buy pots of dirt with nothing obviously growing in them.

-paghat the ratgirl