My last minute spring bulb rush

SALE SALE SALE

I was in my local DIY shop earlier this week and spring flowering bulbs were on Sale.

Three packets for the price of one

The sale was so hard to resist - all those lovely bulbs reduced to a third of their normal price. OMG I could buy 30 bulbs for the normal price of 10.

Now a clump of 10 bulbs is beautiful, but three clumps of 10 will make real show!
Here's a clump of 10 red tulips in my garden last spring to whet your appetite....

tulips behind the broad beans

So I went shopping for glue and came home from the DIY Sale with 50 daffodils and 20 blue iris bulbs for my garden and 60 tulips for my next door friends garden.

Planting bulbs late in the year

This isn't the first year I have been lucky to bag a bargain, so I know that bulbs can be difficult to plant this late in the year. 

Here in the South of England it's is almost winter, and most of the garden plants have lost their top growth and gone to ground. This makes it really difficult to tell where things are already planted. 

In my crowded garden I'm bound to dig up something that is already loved, so I don't want to dig big holes for the bulbs. Things have been made worse by the weather, this autumns big rains have saturated the soil with water and my ground is heavy and soggy. Standing on the beds and digging would compact my already heavy clay soil and make a lot of mess.
I'm not downhearted though. Lucky me, I've planted loads of  bulbs late in the year and after now after lots of trial and error, I finally have the perfect tool for this job.

The easy bulb planter

This is a metal bulb planter and it works like a dream. Its a sort of oversized apple corer with a spade handle.

Full size bulb planter

  

In the past I've tried all sorts of hand held bulb planters, none of them were any good.

I found that after three or four bulbs my wrists would get tired. Hand held planters are hard work - bending over or kneeling and pushing on a hand held planter was tiring and time consuming.
So don't waste your money, if your planning on planting a lot of bulbs, skip the hand held planters and treat yourself to a great garden tool. Buy a bulb planter you can push with your feet and stand on.

Here is a close up of the business end. Like a good quality digging spade, mine has boot flanges which make it easy to push in with my wellies or boots.

The cutting end 

I place the planter where I want to put in a bulb.

Put my foot on the flange and push the planter into the ground, the same as using a digging spade. 

If it doesn't slide into the top few inches of the soil easily then I know there is something growing there already! I can move the planter a few inches where there is a gap.

My wellie on the push edge or flange

My planter is steel and has a sharp leading edge. If needed this will cut easily through most top growth of ground cover plants and small shrub roots. Bigger roots and really dry soil will sometimes take two feet on the planter and a good stomp down.

Pushed 7 inches into the soil

I try and be kind to myself and use the bulb planter after a good rain. It's much easier to push through damp soil than dry soil. 

If I'm planting in dry soil, I'll water the area I want to plant in before I plant the bulbs. 

Damp soil also helps the hole stay in shape long enough to get the bulb in. Dry soil often collapses around the hole.

Hole and the cut plug in the planter

A perfect hole - easy for me to get my hand into and place the bulb in the bottom the right way up. 

My hand placing a bulb in the hole

This is how the plugs of soil were coming out of the planter this afternoon. Just how I like them.

When the soil is damp like this the plug will stay stuck together and I can pick it up and push it back in the hole on top of the bulb. 

If I'm planting through weeds I'll push the plug back in upside down, which usually kills the weeds.

The soil plug next to the planter

Guaranteeing a good show from my bulbs

Flowering bulbs are not cheap - so I give them the best start I can. 

• I push the planter in as far as it will go - about 7 inches. (30cm). This is 3 inches (12cm) deeper than most bulbs like. 
• I fill the bottom three inches (12cm) of the hole with some good home made compost. Then I put the in bulb.  Three inches of compost in this size hole is two cupped hands full (my hands anyway). 
• I put another handful in the hole on top of the bulb before I push the plug of garden soil back in. 

The compost will give the new bulb some rich and light soil to root into and guarantees me great flowers for the first year or two. 

I like to dig 5 or 6 holes at a time in a loose circle, with a generous hole space between each hole. I think flowering bulbs look better in clumps than in lines. Near enough together that intertwining  leaves will help support the flowers in windy conditions, but far enough away from each other that the bulbs have room to grow.

I planted them all  - 110 bulbs this afternoon in three hours between the spells of rain and the early autumn sunset. Brilliant.