On this warm 44 degree day, we are just finishing planting our many kazillion of bulbs. (I know, I know..... Just remember that the topic of our Radio Garden podcast interview was Obsession...) :)

I have two tips to pass along.

We plant our narcissus and tulips and some other bulbs- in 8" deep troughs (as big as possible in our tightly packed beds but at least big enough for 10 bulbs of one variety.)

* We've found that the best way to deal w/ the excavated dirt is to shovel it into large pots(i.e. 18+ " diameter).

We do this for 2 reasons, the first of which is that when we used to just shovel dirt onto the ground, some got lost and we never had enough dirt to top off the troughs completely.

The second reason is that when the soil is needed to fill in the troughs at the end, the pots can be tilted over the trough and tipped out, and then lifted up and emptied. This is much easier and quicker than shovelling the soil out of the pots.

So our system is that we:

-shovel out the trough into pots

-place the bulbs

-pour pot of dirt over the bulbs for a few " of cover

-spread bulb food

-place muscari (we use them as marker bulbs in these troughs, at least outlining the trough, and sometimes covering it completely.)

-top off w/ remaining soil from pots

-sprinkle any packing sawdust over the trough to mark it

================================

To efficiently design and coordinate the planting of many small groups of tall summer bulbs(we do ornithogolum magnum, and many kinds of allium, each typically in groups of 3 or 5):

- Decide in advance what standard size grouping you want of a certain type of bulb

- Skewer a bright orange Post-It onto a Y stake(or some other tall thin stake) moving the paper up to the top by the Y arms.If you want double the standand planting size in an area, use 2 Post Its on the stake.

- Place the Y stakes where you want the bulb groupings to be planted.

Helpful for previewing your design scheme, the bright orange papers seen at 3'+H will, from a distance, give you an accurate picture of what the overall effect will be when the summer bulbs bloom.

hope these might be helpful in the future

best,

mindy

www.cottonarboretum.com/