Ring-around-a-roasting at the foot of a gray birch, twenty dazzling-white spring snowflakes nodding at the turn of a path, a company of bright-eyed kaufmanniana tulips; perching lightly in a rocky crevice, a flock of tiny canary daffodils that seem ready to wing.
There’s something about the miniature bulbs that’s more fauna than flora, more fairy tale than reality.
Each one has its elfin character and a happy-go-lucky way of stamping your garden “personally yours.”
That Spring Feeling
In the rock garden, at the edge of a border, with evergreen ground covers, clustered wherever there’s a stone or stump to back them up, used by the hundreds as drifts in the lawn, miniature bulbs, more than anything else, give you that spring feeling.
Potted and forced into flower indoors, they’re winsome window-garden items, delicate decorations for a coffee table, or what-not, delightful dish-garden inhabitants. They’re indispensable for sink gardens and precious in the small greenhouse.
Perhaps part of their charm lies in their unfamiliarity. So few are well-known and widely grown. So many more are easy to find, easy to grow, and especially easy to pay for. And they’re such beguiling plants; I don’t see how any garden could be without them, miniature or not.
All of the bulbs included here hold their flowers no more than 6″ inches high. They’re not small versions of better-known, larger plants, but mostly completely different with their characteristics — and with bulbs, foliage, and flowers in miniature proportions.
The word bulb is used in its generalized sense and includes true bulbs, corms, and tubers.
Some of these miniature bulbs are available from nurseries and other local suppliers. But the majority, particularly the most unusual, are offered by mail by bulb importers and specialist growers.
Reading some of the catalogs is like taking a quick trip to exotic parts of the world. And for me, ordering no more than I can find time to plant and care for is a severe exercise in self-restraint.
There are always a few more that would look well in some special spot, others that are intriguing simply because I’ve never grown or seen them.
Bulb Catalogs
Most bulb catalogs give specific cultural recommendations that help select varieties that will adapt to your climate and to the sun, soil, and moisture in the spot where you want to plant them.
In general, bulbs are either hardy or not; they will survive a deep winter freeze or must be lifted and stored before the ground freezes.
There are some natural borderline exceptions, like wide fascinating varieties native to the West that are not so touchy about cold as they are about other climatic and cultural conditions.
Growing Miniature Bulbs Outdoors
Hardy bulbs are usually planted in late summer, and early fall when the foliage has ripened and died back, and the plants are in deepest dormancy. This includes fall-flowering types like colchicums.
The earlier bulbs can be planted, the stronger the root systems they can develop before winter and the stronger their flowering during the first season.
Drainage
Make sure the selected site has perfect drainage. Bulbs rot quickly when water stands around their roots.
Dig generously, to about eight inches deep; enrich the soil with organic matter such as leaf mold or compost; increase aeration and drainage in sticky, clay-like soils with sharp sand; add a light sprinkling of bone meal or superphosphate if fertility is low.
Since few bulbs like very acidic soil, lime is a “must” except where the soil tests so extremely alkaline that adding organic matter does not make it acidic.
Planting Depth
An average measure for planting depth is twice the bulb’s diameter in cooler climates, an inch or so deeper in areas like southern Virginia to protect against summer heat.
For quick effect, plant about a dozen bulbs in a group; six bulbs more widely spaced will usually increase and give the same effect in several years.
Watering
Most bulbs need moisture before, during, and after flowering when foliage is green and growing or ripening.
They’re better off on the dry side during dormancy. This is a perfect setup for most hardy types because they need the least watering in summer when droughts are most common.
But it does increase the urgency for perfect drainage for some of the Western species that can’t bear moisture in winter.
Fertilizing
We seldom feed our little bulbs except for an early-spring top-dressing of leaf-mold compost. Occasionally, some healthy specimens may get a puny, undernourished look that calls for sprinkling bone meal or superphosphate over the soil and scratching it in.
Or we may water with manure “tea” during or after flowering time.
If soil is properly prepared at planting time, supplemental feeding should not be necessary for most types for several years.
By that time, some bulbs have multiplied so enthusiastically that they should be lifted, separated, and reset in freshly mixed soil.
Problems and Pests
If you plant bulbs where they don’t stand in soggy mud or water, you’ll have little loss from rot. But if you’re in a suburban or rural area inhabited by cute chipmunks, squirrels, or mice, you won’t want to plant juicy morsels such as tulips, crocus, and Eranthis just to feed the animals.
I’ve never had the time or patience to plant bulbs in wire cages. Poison baits can be dangerous when you have children or pets.
An effective safety measure is to put the bait inside a clean milk bottle and cover it with a heap of straw or leaves, with evergreen branches to hold the heap in place.
Winter Protection
Because the root systems may not be completely matured, newly planted bulbs should be mulched with a light, airy covering of something like salt hay during their first winter.
After that, the necessity for protection varies with hardness and with climate.
Sometimes these mulches hold in more moisture than is good for bulbs. If alternate freezing and thawing should heave the shallow roots up through cracks in the soil, press them back gently but firmly and cover them with soil again.
44659 by Na