Friday Fluff: Winter is coming, let's talk about spring!

If your holidays look anything like mine, this weekend is your only break between the Thanksgiving travel and the Christmas prep. So, what should we do with this one late autumn weekend before the holiday madness really gets going? Let's think about spring. Specifically planting flowering bulbs such as daffodils and tulips!

For most gardeners living in zones 6 and 7 (those would be the northern half of the Southerners), the time to plant spring bulbs is Thanksgiving, so we're a little late, but there's still time. For gardeners living in zones 8 and 9, you have until Christmas. If you live right on the 7/8 line, like me, this weekend will be perfect! But what to choose? And why now?
Lots of plants need to chill before they can bloom in spring: many flowering bulbs, fruit trees like peaches and apples, and lots of other perennials. This chilling requirement is usually met by the plant being exposed to a certain number of hours of temperature below 50F. Different cultivars (or varieties if we're talking about wild plants) of the same plant species can have different chilling requirements; this is part of how plants adapt to the climate they are growing in.

Plant survival benefits from a chilling requirement that is appropriate to it's location. In colder areas a long chilling requirement will protect the plant from making flowers during a warm snap before the end of winter. If the plant made flower during a warm snap, the returning cold would kill the flowers and the plant would be unable to reproduce that year. If that happened year after year, the plant would be unsuccessful and it's genes would not pass into subsequent generations of the population. On the other hand, a short chilling requirement is better in warmer climates. If the plant's chilling requirement is too long for the area it lives in, by the time spring arrives and it's time for the plant to flower the plant will not have accumulated enough chill hours and will refuse to flower. This will also make a plant unsuccessful at passing it's genes onto subsequent generations. While researchers have long known about these chill requirements, there is still much about the molecular mechanisms we don't understand about how the plants know how many hours of cold they have been exposed to.

Bulbs in pots

If you don't have a yard, or just want your flowers in a pot, flower bulbs can be planted in pots. Just remember that the soil in your pot can be a good 20 degrees colder than the soil in the ground. You may need to protect the bulbs from freezing nights (or switch to varieties that are hardy up north), or massive temperature fluctuations. If you have a garage or attic, you can stash the bulbs there. Otherwise, since it doesn't usually get too cold for potted bulbs in zones 7+, let them stay outside but keep them in a shady place so the pot doesn't heat up during the day only to refreeze at night. That's very confusing for the poor plants.

You can plant potted bulbs closer together than you would in your yard, and you also want to plant them closer to the surface. Other than that, growing bulbs in pots is not terribly different from growing them in the ground. However, as the years go on you may find your potted bulbs seem to grow weaker while yard bulbs grow and multiply, this is because they are over crowded (this can happen in your yard too, but takes a long time). Send the potted bulbs to the yard for their retirement and replace them with new bulbs.

Daffodils

Classic trumpet daffodils	Double cup daffodils	Split cup daffodil

These are a classic, I think. I've never lived anywhere where, come early spring, a few brave daffodils didn't peak out of the cold. I've never planted one, but my yard has always been full of them. The traditional ones are yellow with a yellow cup in the center, but they come with petals and cups in various combinations of white, yellow, and orange. There are also double cup daffodils that look more like yellow roses than daffodils, and split cup daffodils.

Tulips

Classic tulips	Fringe tulips	Double cup (peony) tulips

 
This is always the first thing I think of when I think of bulbs, but they aren't so common around my parts of the country. This may be because most tulips are hardy in zones 3-7. I live right on the line between 7 and 8, so maybe most tulips don't preform well here. But if you live a little further north (Hi, Clemson friends!) they should do great. You can also chill these in the fridge and then plant in pots if you live in zone 8+. They come in the normal cups your used to, and ones with silly fringe, and others that are double cupped and look like peonies.

Other Bulbs for zones 6-8.

Hyacinth (zone 4-8)	Crocus (zone 4-8)	Giant flowering onion (5-7)
Dutch Iris (5-8)	Oriental Lily (5-8)	Blue bells (3-8)

Those giant flowering onions get to be about 4 feet tall and the flower balls are 7 inches in diameter. They would be quite the statement in your garden this spring! The blue bells will naturalize well if you have a shaded/woodsy back yard, they will form ground cover between the trees and bloom every spring.

I got all these pictures from John Shceepers Bulbs. If you want to buy bulbs online (a great way to get more obscure cultivars), you can go with them or any of several others, or you can go to your local nursery for bulbs.