All about Bulbs.

Category: Organic Tips for your Garden | Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2007 6:09 am

To protect bulbs from moles, rodents etc, cut the top half from a clean empty Bleach jug,punch drainage holes in the sides and base of the bottom of the jug, sink the jug into your flower bed, fill with soil,and plant bulbs inside it.

Protect bulbs from voles, they are sure to tunnel under the earth, plant your bulb inside a clean empty yogurt cup, punched with holes.

To store plant bulbs, I fill the foot of a pair of panty hose and hang it high enough to keep the contents dry, and the fibers of the hose also help to repel rodents and insects.

It is difficult sometimes to know what depth you are at, when planting bulbs, my friend uses liquid paper to mark off inches along the edge of her trowel, this makes a convenient ruler to measure the depth.

Protect gladiolas and freesia bulbs from pests by soaking them for 12 hours in a mix of 2.5 tablespoons of Listerine in a gallon of water. Take the bulbs out of the Listerine dip and WITHOUT rinsing them off, plant them.

Deter rodents from digging up bulbs by sprinkling ground red pepper around bulb plantings.

Many people don't know that the tip of a bulb is the top, from which the central bud sprouts.Roots grow from the bottom.
I did read that no matter what way you place a bulb in a hole, it will turn itself the right way up.!!!

Just a little titbit of knowledge::
In the 17th century owning rare bulbs became a status symbol,especially tulips.
The bulbs were sold by weight, usually still in the ground.Traders could earn themselves approximately $40,000 dollars a month!. In 1635, I think, three Rembrandt tulip bulbs sold for $25,000 dollars
and in that same year, the tulip market crashed..

NEVER eat hyacinth bulbs, if eaten, they can cause death, so watch out for your children.

Till next time
Mrs Greenthumb.

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Gardenstew wrote on Wed Feb 21, 2007 2:10 pm:

So many great bulb saving tips Mrs. G. The whole 'tulipmania'/bulb trading period of history is quite interesting indeed.

Love the Listerine tip!

zuzu's petals wrote on Wed Feb 21, 2007 7:37 pm:

I hadn't ever thought of using bleach bottles that way,
:-D great idea.
I have used the little green plastic "baskets"
that strawberries are often sold in,
that worked well to discourage the diggers, too.

I live on a coastal island, we have sand, moreso than soil
and bulbs tend to dig themselves in deeper and deeper each year,
soon they are buried too deep to flower well,
then you have to lift and replant them.
I've begun to put a few hand fulls of large-ish gravel into
the bottom of each planting hole to act as a barrier
and save myself so much replanting.