Bulb Planting Hack Update

Back in May I wrote "Bulb Planting Hack" and posted about an experiment I was going to try out when planting tender bulbs in my garden that had to be dug up in the winter. The idea is really simple and I'm sure had been thought of by many gardeners before and I wish it would have occurred sooner to me.

The problem I had in my garden was trying to find bulbs I planted once the foliage had died down. You can easily add plant markers and stakes in the ground to mark where your plants are planted but when you go to dig up the bulbs, tubers or rhizomes you may end up damaging the plant with the trowel or shovel.

It occurred to me that what I need was something that surrounded the bulbs and gave me a visual clue when I was getting close to the bulb. What I did was place one of those plastic baskets that strawberries come in at the grocery store in the ground and then placed my Calla Lily bulbs inside that. You can see an image of what I'm describing at the link above.

A few days ago when I went to lift my Calla Lilies from the ground to store them for the winter I was easily able to locate them in the ground and bring them out of the soil without damaging them as you can see from the photo above. I noticed this also made it easier to locate any offsets or "bulb babies" produced by the plants I did this to. I'm going to do this in the garden again next year and expand it to include more bulbs-but I'll make larger trays with chicken wire so I can add more bulbs and lift them all at once.

Bulb Planting Hack

Since most of my favorite bulbs are too tender for my garden and would probably die over the winter here in Chicago I need to be able to plant them and later find them. The problem is that once fall comes around I sometimes forget about where I placed them. This year I have been using things like this strawberry basket from the grocery store.

By placing them inside of something like this basket I can plant them and in the fall when they are ready to be lifted I can find them easily simply by locating the basket. You can also create something similar out of chicken wire to use for your summer bulbs in the garden or place the bulbs you have to lift in large enough pots.

Use For Pizza Table

In this previous blog entry I mentioned those plastic things that are put on top of pizzas to keep the box from touching the cheese.

I've found another use for them.

A lot of my plants are rather small and all are growing on a shelf near a window. Since so many of the plants are small and in small pots like the two in this photo I find it necessary to add something underneath the second row of plants so that the first row of plants doesn't block the available light. So I can use these plastic things to create "stadium seating" on my plant shelf and allow light to reach all of my plants. In the picture the plant below is a cutting of a cacti someone gave me that I'm trying to root. The plant sitting on the plastic table is actually two bulb offsets of Ledebouria socialis commonly called 'Silver Quills.' They're a good plant to grow in an indoor bulb garden.

If you're growing African Violets under lights these little pizza tables could help you raise some of the shorter plants up higher so that they're closer to the lights.