Growing Pages: How to Grow Fall-Planted Flower Bulbs
Fall-planted flower bulbs are easy to grow and supremely rewarding once you see their delightful blooms emerging in Spring. The hardest thing about fall-planted bulbs is actually remembering to plant them in Fall! But once you've gotten the planting work out of the way, you can sit back and leave them alone and wait until their gorgeous flower display emerges.
Planting your flower bulbs:
- In the Fall, choose a spot that gets quite a lot of light and has good soil drainage.
- Planting flower bulbs is fairly simple. Bulbs resemble small onions and you will be able to easily tell that the bulb should be planted with the roots down and the tip pointing up so that they shoots can reach the surface of the soil.
- Usually the rule of thumb when planting bulbs is that bulbs need at least 2 times their height of soil above them. Dig a 2 to 3 inch deep hole, place the bulb into it and cover with soil. Leave about 6 inches of space between each bulb.
- After planting, water well so that the soil above the bulbs settles.
- Fall planted bulbs flower in the Spring. After the flowers die down, the plant can enjoy a warmer rest period. You don't have to water too much during this rest period. At this point, you can choose to tidy up the plant and remove the old leaves.