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I am going to buy a bunch of spring flowering bulbs and I just know with my busy schedule that I can't get them planted now. Can I wait until spring and where should I store them? Which bulbs are the best?

If you are not going to have any time to plant bulbs this fall, don't buy them. These bulbs need a period of cold, damp rest so they can bloom in the spring. Leaving them in the house or garage won't accomplish this. How about buying a small number and planting them? If you buy a dozen daffodil bulbs to plant, you won't be killing more than fifteen or twenty minutes in your busy schedule. If bulbs aren't planted, they begin to dry out and soon look and feel like brown prunes. These are dead. Bulbs need to be firm and blemish free. The best way to have that happen is to plant them immediately. They need time for some root establishment for their spring debuts. As to what bulbs are best, it depends on your goal. If having bulbs continue to do well in Michigan and to multiply themselves, choose daffodils, grape hyacinth, crocus, small Dutch iris, any of the allium family or any of the little bulbs like squill. If they are incredibly successful, in a few years you might have to dig and separate large clumps. If you want bulbs for producing bright colors, look at any of the tulips. For most gardeners, tulips only perform well for several years and then began fading away. Replace them when the spring show isn't worthy. This is usually the case with hyacinths, also. If you are troubled by rodents digging and eating bulbs, choose daffodils, alliums, grape hyacinths and some of the little bulbs. Alliums are members of the onion family. They virtually never get eaten. Occasionally when these bulbs don't come up, it is because a mole has passed beneath the bulb and it dropped several inches lower in the soil. Moles don't eat bulbs. But they do leave a tunnel for other guys to go down. Tulips are on the top of the Mammal Appetizer Menu. Everybody eats flowers and leaves and lots of guys eat bulbs. Crocus bulbs get rooted up and eaten in many gardens. Be prepared to protect newly planted bulbs. Plant them in an area where you can unroll a piece of hardware screening or hardware cloth over the surface. Weight down the corners of the wire with rocks or bricks. No rodents are small enough to dig in the holes but water passes right through. Take the wire up in the spring as the bulbs are beginning to emerge. Chicken wire could have holes too large to keep out eaters.

I have a large number of shrubs and small trees in my yard. A gardening friend told me that I should be wrapping some of the small evergreens and rhododendrons in burlap each winter. They have done fine in the past. Am I being a negligent gardener and creating a problem by not burlapping?


"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" works in the gardening world, too. Burlap is used as a shield to slow drying winter winds. You may have enough plantings or buildings in the right areas that this is already happening. Those winter winds could affect broadleaf evergreens like rhododendrons. Some are marginally hardy in Michigan. Leaves that get damaged in the winter remain damaged. Narrow leaf evergreens are sometimes damaged. The shorter the needle, the better the chance. If the evergreens have a western or northern exposure and really get beaten up by winds, they might benefit from a burlap screen. If evergreens are close to the street, burlap may not protect them well from salt spray. And there's also the problem of salty water going into root areas. Burlap should make a fence that doesn't touch your plants. Leave the top open. Don't "wrap" them. This can cause major damage.

Gretchen Voyle, MSU Extension-Livingston County Horticulture
Agent 517/546-3950

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