Start thinking about planting summer-blooming bulbs

Well here we are at the end of Feb­ru­ary, and spring feels so close yet so far. Even though March often does indeed roar in like a lion, the promise of at least a few pleas­ant days, invig­o­rat­ing rains, and the earth begin­ning to blink flashes of wel­come color excites even the least enthu­si­as­tic gardener.

It can also be a time of regret­, see­ing every­one else’s tulips, daf­fodil and hyacinth in vivid bloom and remem­ber­ing “that week­end in Octo­ber I was going to plant my bulbs…” Unfor­tu­nately, those early-blooming spring favorites can­not be planted now, but look­ing ahead it is the right time to start think­ing about summer-blooming bulbs to be planted in the spring.

Favorite flow­ers like iris, glad­i­o­lus, and dahlia grow from bulbs that are not hardy enough to last over win­ter and should be planted shortly after the frost-free date. Here in Delaware County, that date is around May 15. Spring bulbs are a won­der­ful group of flow­ers that pro­vide a full spec­trum of color, a sea­son of bloom and a won­der­ful cut­ting gar­den for advanced and novice gar­den­ers alike.

Another enjoy­able com­po­nent of spring bulbs is the lack of com­mit­ment they require. A bed in the gar­den planted with summer-blooming bulbs this year can eas­ily be used for veg­eta­bles next year. Because these bulbs are more frag­ile than bulbs planted in the late autumn, they will likely die in the ground over the win­ter if they are not removed from the ground at the end of the sea­son. How­ever, dig­ging them out at the end of the sum­mer is easy because spring bulbs are planted closer to the sur­face than bulbs planted in the autumn.

I believe the undis­puted queen of summer-blooming bulbs is the dahlia. Dahlias are large, expres­sive and stun­ning blooms in a wide spec­trum of color. Star­bursts of color, they eas­ily ascend to the cen­ter stage of any gar­den. They also make spec­tac­u­lar flow­ers to be cut and enjoyed inside. Because some dahlia blooms can be so incred­i­bly large, a table can be filled with the color and ambiance of fresh flow­ers with min­i­mal effort and only a few stems cut from out­side. Like most bulbs, dahlias have been hybridized into count­less options; almost all col­ors are avail­able. Whether your gar­den color scheme is mono­chro­matic with whites and greens or all about the beauty of nat­ural con­trast with vivid scar­let against ener­getic yel­low backed by a sooth­ing and cool blue, dahlias are a fab­u­lous addi­tion. They are only hardy in zones 8 to 10, so they must be removed from the soil in the autumn and stored in a frost-free place through the win­ter. Some have petals that are plain and smooth, some are so intri­cately curled and ornate they resem­ble a Dale Chi­huly glass instal­la­tion. These show-stopping blooms are def­i­nitely worth the min­i­mal effort of overwintering.

Another summer-blooming bulb that I hold very dear are Ori­en­tal lilies. My very first gar­den­ing endeavor when I was six years old was a lily gar­den tucked on the side of my child­hood home behind an air con­di­tioner — for some rea­son my par­ents did not give me prime front yard real estate. Look­ing back, I sup­pose I can under­stand. Suf­fice it to say, my lily gar­den was not a Monet liv­ing paint­ing, but my lilies thrived. Ori­en­tal lilies are very easy to grow (a six year old can do it!) and pro­vide such a radi­ant and mes­mer­iz­ing reward for a quick and easy dig. If you desire to cut your lilies and bring them into arrange­ments in the house, some find it help­ful to cut the sta­mens (brown pods in the mid­dle) because they can leave a yel­low dust that stains and to which some are aller­gic. Even less work than dahlias, lilies are hardy n zones 5 to 9, so they do not need to be removed from the earth over winter.

An arti­cle about summer-blooming bulbs planted in spring would be incom­plete with­out the men­tion of glad­i­o­lus. I feel glad­i­oli, unde­serv­ingly so, are often over­looked or dis­missed as com­mon. Well … I sup­pose this could be true. They are one of the most pop­u­lar cut flow­ers and are rel­a­tively inex­pen­sive in flo­ral shops. Per­son­ally, I very much enjoy glad­i­oli. Glad­i­oli come in such a wide array of color and last so long once cut; they really are a great choice for any gar­den. In flo­ral work, one of the hard­est ele­ments to achieve is ver­ti­cal­ity. Glad­i­oli are long stems packed full of indi­vid­ual blooms, adding effort­less height to any arrangement.

With the strange win­ter we have had thus far, unfor­tu­nately even those who were pre­pared last autumn may not have their spring-blooming bulbs, as many have emerged pre­ma­turely and in dan­ger of freez­ing. Bulbs that can be planted in the spring to bloom within only a few short weeks are a gardener’s best-kept secret. Even if they are your plan B, no one else would ever have to know just how easy they are to enjoy.

Seed start­ing program

Join the Delaware County Mas­ter Gar­den­ers, Grow and Share Com­mu­nity Gar­den Com­mit­tee, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Thurs­day, March 15, for an instruc­tional pro­gram on how to start your veg­etable gar­den. Con­nie Zuga and Norma Lind will walk you through step by step on how to start your own seeds at home. The pro­gram will be held at in the Com­mu­nity Room of the new YMCA, 1121 S. Houk Road, Delaware.

This class is part of the Com­mu­nity Gar­den pro­gram series sched­uled for the thirs Thurs­day of every month, March through Sep­tem­ber. Pro­grams are free of charge.

For ques­tions, call the exten­sion office at 740–833-2030.

Stephen Jones is an OSU Exten­sion Mas­ter Gar­dener volunteer.

Posted by Master Gardener on Feb 25 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.