The first requirement of practically all bulbs is good drainage. Providing this is probably the most important part of planting them.
If bulbs seem short-lived for you, check how well the water drains from your soil. If puddles stand around them, bulbs are in trouble.
One way to ensure good drainage is to plant on a slope so water drains off. This is by far the easiest method, and you are fortunate if your garden presents such a planting site.
The other way to get good drainage is to build it into your soil. Beneath bulbs like lilies and daffodils, you can put a little mound of sand. This helps if your drainage problems are not serious.
Or you can raise the level of the bed a few inches, a better solution. In extreme cases, you can dig down and install drain tiles laid in a gravel bed.
An old-fashioned method, which has its merits, is to plant all bulbs on a thin sand cushion. The kinds that are prone to rot, like certain lilies, are tipped slightly to one side to prevent water from collecting and penetrating the bulb cavity.
The Best Soil
The best soil is medium loam. Lighten heavy soil with peat and sand over and under the bulb.
Either compost or peat moss will help lighten the soil and will make it more fertile. Lilies especially thrive on humus, and getting too much humus in a lily bed is nearly impossible.
Adding a slow-acting bulb fertilizer to the prepared soil pays off. The bone meal is good. Use about a half cup of it to a 12-bulb tulip clump.
A quarter cup of low-power chemical fertilizer, like 5-10-5, is good, too. Mix it into the soil so the bulb doesn’t contact it directly. Avoid fresh manures.
Finding The Right Place
Most kinds of bulbs need sunny locations or at least sun during the weeks when they are maturing their foliage.
This means that some of the early kinds, like scillas, chionodoxa, and snowdrops, can grow in tree shade successfully since they can bloom and ripen their leaves in the sun before the tree overhead sends forth its leaves.
Very few kinds do not require much sun. One such is the wood hyacinth (Scilla campanulata), which is highly valued for spring bulb color in the shade where other bulbs won’t grow.
Planting Bulbs at the Right Depth
There are various ways of planting bulbs at the right depth. If you have a fairly large bed of all one kind of bulb to be planted closely, such as hyacinths or tulips, you may as well excavate the whole thing to the right depth, a section at a time.
Loosen the soil in the bottom of the trench, and work in humus and sand. Put a sand layer immediately under the bulbs. Then space bulbs as you wish them, and fill in the trench with the earth with some sand and peat moss mixed into it.
If only a few bulbs are involved, it is to spade the soil for any flower bed, working in sand and peat, and then make a planting hole with a trowel or opener. Drop in the bulb at the proper depth, and fill the hole.
Some trowels and bulb hole openers are marked in inches so you can tell if you are planting at the desired depth.
Set a label in the middle of the clump to mark the variety. Bulbs are more interesting if you know their names. And the label protects them from accidental damage months later when you might forget they are there and chop into them.
Give a Good Soaking and Mulching
After you plant bulbs, give the area a good soaking. Moisture is needed to spur bulbs to grow fall roots before cold weather sets in.
Fall watering bulb beds are a good idea during dry years, even when the plantings are long established.
Mulch is not essential, but it helps if the soil surface forms a crust. Several materials are suitable—ground corn cobs, tobacco stems, chopped hay, grass clippings, compost, and even wood chips, although these are rather coarse and unsightly in the spring when bulbs bloom.
Don’t make the mulch too thick—an inch or two is plenty. Wee bulbs require even less.
See the chart on the next two pages for the depth and spacing of 23 bulbs.
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