About Long Island Gardener Expertise Growing Tulips? Dahlias? Daffodils? Gladiolus? It doesn't get easier than bulbs and tubers. Once in a while, something goes wrong: The dreaded Narcissus Bulb Fly, which resembles a honeybee. Mosaic virus, which can ignite a field of tulips in a single season. Nematodes, lurking underground. Here on the North Shore of Long Island, the garden is full of surprises. If you live in the Northeast/Atlantic Coast, I can help you pick the right bulb for every season, indoors and out, and help you fertilize, bloom and harvest for home or work. How: I have degrees in related fields, but my best understanding is all learned from trial and error. For most of my 53 years I have been gardening somewhere. No matter what the problem, I've learned the best answers are always Organic -- Earth friendly, less expensive, healthier for people and pets, easier and cleaner than toxic liquids and powders that big chemical companies sell so smoothly.
Experience Besides degrees in related fields, and a few favorite horticultural societies, I work as a docent at our local botanical gardens -- but it's the years of work in the garden that's the real test.
I planted a window box with crocusses and a few other spring bulbs last fall. They did well and I left them in the same window box, sowing poppies in it once the leaves had died. The poppies are gone now but some bulbs are already sending up leaves, up to almost an inch. The box is too full to cover them with soil.
Winters here (northern Germany) can be mild, with only maybe a week or two of night temps below freezing, but it can also be a lot harder, with snow until March etc. Do I need to cover the leaves? If I have to, can I safely take them out of the box and replant them in deeper containers?
Thanks,
Cornelia
Answer The reason people are warned not to plant their Spring Bulbs too early is illustrated in your Window Box. Unless Bulbs are planted deep enough not to be triggered into premature growth, they must be lifted out of the ground and kept dark, cool and bone dry -- conditions that mimic the high, mild, dry environment where the genus/species originated.
Your Window Box is too shallow to do this. Winters are mild enough there that you don't need to worry about the Bulbs rotting from too much cold and moisture. Unfortunately, the Fall is too warm and moist to send them into dormant mode.
I don't know how Summer conditions went, but if you get these into a pot and chill them in a refrigerator, in total darkness, you may slow growth down enough to get a decent bloom from them before they are rendered worthless. Bulbs can be Tulips, or Crocuses, or Daffodils, or something else, or even all of the above -- Tulips being the most uncooperative of the lot even under the most ideal conditions.
Let me repeat that...
...EVEN UNDER THE MOST IDEAL CONDITIONS.
You may however have lucked out. Maybe you planted a cultivar that is particularly good at forcing or responds forgivingly to this kind of treatment. Throw it in the fridge, no watering please other than what you've already done, and bring it out in 5 weeks to place outside for a Mild Winter Weather treatment. You may get a bloom. Or, if the Bulb was not able to make one in time, you may not. It's worth finding out.
Sorry I can't be more optimistic. I want to make sure you know this is not an easy thing to do, and you are already disadvantaged, but it may be worth trying for the experience alone. There's no other skill that you can point to where you can say that you learn from your mistakes more than gardening. Next time, refrigerate after opening.
