Planted a bunch of different bulbs in the early Fall...didn't mark them, and now I have beautiful greenery coming up, but can't for the life of me remember what I planted!
Should be a very interesting Spring, LOL! Maybe I should invest in some cheap plant markers?
Angie
Britney Spears has entered the garden!!!
That's right. You were too busy breaking Jason Alexander's heart to worry about mundane things like plant labels!!!
the bulbs around on me anyway......I mean, it HAS to be them because I don't remember planting those THERE, ya know what I mean? madgardener up on the ridge, back in Faerie Holler, overlooking English Mountain (with Winter reeeeaaallly trying to come back, despite the Spring insistance), in Eastern Tennessee, zone 7, Sunset zone 36
>You can call them "faeries" Maddie, but I call them GOPHERS! Emilie
I plant in drifts, and sketch them out on paper as I go. I also leave a small tag in the ground for each drift. Do you plan out the appearance in your head to any level?
BTW are there any comments or experience on Tulipa Kaufmanniana or Greigii?
The foliage of different types of spring flowering bulbs is distinctive. You should be able to tell the difference between the tulips, daffodils, crocus, hyacinth, etc. almost immediately after they start to emerge. The color of the flowers is a different story.
"Leon Trollski" expounded:
I've had them both, they're lovely, but like their overbred cousins they don't last long. The kaufmanniana's were around for four years or so, the other for maybe two years longer.
The wild kaufmanniana is fully fertile, naturalizes well, returns year after year, produces attractive seed-pods. I have a happy little patch of them, & they're just as showy as the hybridized kaufmannianas. So far as I know most of the others also perennialize but do not all naturalize in the self-seeding sense. With the explosion of new cultivars in recent years, I am not surprised if they are becoming less capable of fully perennializing as they get further & further from their botanical origin; but the few varieties I possess do come back every year (but some are only in their second or third year in the garden & I may be disappointed in them in the future if Ann is right -- but the unhybridized wild ones, which if I recall I got from Oddyssey bulbs, those were the first kaufmannianas I ever planted, & they have never disappointed).
The greigii I've had the longest is 'Red Riding Hood' & when I dug those up to move them after their first location got too shady over time, I had dozens of bulbs where I'd planted very few, & right now there are greigii leaves popping up in the old location because I couldn't find all the bulblets two years ago (I doubt those will ever flower, it's now even darker in that location with shrubs growing so much). I was under the impression most greigiis produce offsets easily, but I haven't as yet lifted any of the others to see for myself. They all seem at least to have fully perennialized, except for one patch that I tried for drought tolerance in a xeriscape location & they did lousy, cooked right in the soil. The rest have yet to disappoint. Several (if not most?) of the greigiis produce seedpods too, but do not grow true from seeds. I can't just now recall if any of mine ever had seed pods though, I failed to jot that down in my garden diary-database if they did, & my memory doesn't hold everything like it once seemed to.
-paghat the ratgirl
snipped-for-privacy@netscape.net (paghat) expounded:
Absolutely true in some climates. Not here.
Nope, I just buy them, and start trying to remember where there are other bulbs amongst the perennials and plant them in pockets here and there. When then come up I'm pleased. If I lose a few, that's just nature and life. I fill the empty spot with other things later on. My largest bulb mistake was planting a huge assortment in layers in the bed under what is now the Jackmanii clematis vine that grows over the old grapevine. when the crowding took a large portion of the bulbs, I replanted other things.
Anemone live in the spot now with a few stray survivors in the bulb field. Smeagol has dug a piece of that bed and now I have to replant it with something else. Things always change, I just hope the Corydalis survived the digging........it was the yellow variety and reseeds quite nicely now in that bed.
I love the Kaufmannia's and Greigii's. The best Greigii for me here in Eastern Tennessee is Red Riding Hood and Toronto. Striped and mottled burgundy leaves on the green is a nice change and the bulbs are perennial and return with a little bulb food each fall to suppliment them. The Kaufmannia I grow is the lily tulips and I also successfully grow some of the species tulips. Tarda, Little Princess, Cynthiana (a yellow with red striped lily that I suspect is a Kauf tulip) and Pinnochio. As much as I love Queen of the Night, she isn't perennial for me, nor are the peony tulips and parrot tulips. I don't grow them anymore as they wow me the first year and don't mature a blossom bud the next year and thereafter. I've learned to treat some like the tender annuals that some are.
My opinion only, of course. madgardener>
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