Shallots to Scilla – Plan Now for Fall Planting

This year’s official* growing season started a full month earlier than usual in our part of the Hudson Valley. Although last week was spangled with frost, spring is already more or less over. Even late-flowering bulbs are toast. The lilacs are in full bloom.

Not wishing to miss the bandwagon, I’ll go ahead and be early too. It’s time to order bulbs for fall planting: pretties for the borders, shallots for the plate.

On the Ornamental Front – Singing the Blues

I don’t think I’ve ever met a “minor,” aka small, bulb I didn’t like, but this year my mind is on the little blues: scilla and chionodoxa, muscari and puschkinia.

In addition to being blue, already a major plus, these old favorites are terrific bargains – inexpensive to buy, easy to plant (see below), and, bless ’em, reliably prolific.

Once you get them going they not only persist forever, they also multiply and move around. Clumps expand into little puddles. Adventurous volunteers pop up far from the original plantings, wildflowers once more.

PLANTING TIPS

Placement: These are early bloomers, but not that early, so it’s unwise to plant them where they’ll get mowed before the leaves have fed the bulbs and the flowers have set seed. I’ve put most of ours at the edges of beds and in the skirts of the trellis of Dutchman’s Pipe that borders the crocus lawn. Annie next door has a wavy blue sea below the trees at the edge of her drive, and she just lets the grass there get shaggy until it’s safe to mow.

Planting:

In grassy areas:  For each clump of 10 to 20 bulbs (depending on size of bulb, not size of budget), envision a rough circle about 10 inches in diameter. Cut all the way around it with a shovel, then cut underneath 2 to 3 inches, so you have a disk of sod. Remove it, loosen the dirt underneath, then position the bulbs on it, pointing up, about 2 bulb-widths apart. (Do not add fertilizer) Replace the disk and press down firmly with a foot.

Elsewhere: In thickly planted beds, you can just use a trowel to lever a wedge-shaped opening and put a few bulbs in it. If the soil is soft after a rain you can sometimes simply push them firmly into spaces between perennials.

Putting some in the cutting garden is usually unnecessary, but if you were planning the sort of wedding that gets planned many months in advance you might want to plant a patch to be harvested for nosegays – Muscari armeniacum have a lovely, not-too-sweet fragrance –  and table decorations.

Shallot planting info coming shortly. Meanwhile, get those orders in;  less-common varieties, including French gray “true” shallots ( Allium oschanini) sell out fast.

I get my little blues from Brent and Becky and from Van Engelen. Shallots come from my personal friends at Johnny’s Selected Seeds,  from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and from Kitchen Garden Seeds (the food branch of Van Engelen).

* The National Weather Service declares the growing season’s start each year,  based on a number of mostly  pretty obvious factors. Once an area is officially in its growing season, frost and freeze warnings are issued whenever warranted until the season is declared officially over.