Seeing as the vegetable garden is seemingly a success, I decided to try my hand with some some floral planting. I figured the easiest way to get started was to plant some bulbs in a naked trough that runs around my garage. (It used to have a large bougainvillea bush, but we pulled it out when we added windows to make the garage an office).
Burpee, who relentlessly sends me gardening sales spam, just happened to pop an offer for some Hyacinth bulbs into my inbox the same day I was thinking of this project. They looked kinda colorful so I figured… why not.
From the burpee email
The bulbs came via the mail, just in a padded envelope. It’s kinda neat that you can just order stuff like this on the net. The bulbs kinda look like little onions. (forgive the Iphone photos… I spontaneously planted these this morning and didnt grab the camera).
Little red and white oniony lookin things
The directions said to plant these little guys 2-4 inches deep and roughly six inches apart. My handy little garden trowel has hash marks for inches and centimeters on it, very convenient for exactly this task.
Dig Dug.
I got through about 4 of these at the suggested planting width when I realised that was a pretty stupid move. Not having measured the area I was planting in, I would have run out of bulbs about 2/3rds of the way through. So, rather than grab a tape measure I figured I can just lay them all out in a nice row and fill out the trough. Then just dig and plant each one from there.
The cool thing about bulbs is that they are perennial. In theory, if they take, they should bloom this spring, and for many many more years. We shall have to wait till things warm up again to see if these are a success, I’ll be sure to break out the real camera to get some pics of the bright colors that hopefully bloom. Till then, stay tuned!