Liberated Gardener

Bulb Land

According to Raleigh garden designer  Tracy Traer, bulbs in piedmont North Carolina gardens often lack good drainage. Many diminish in number and stature because of rot, despite a gardener’s attention.

            A former N.C. State horticulture professor, Traer installed and monitored campus bulb plantings during the 1980's that maintained a constant number of blooms over six years—without adding fertilizer. The difference is that these daffodils and other bulbs were planted on the ground and then covered with 6 inches of pine park much. Their roots can reach the fertile clay, but the bulbs themselves grew free from rot in the fine bark. Most ornamental bulbs originated in the deserts and mountains of central Asia—so a well-drained bark bed mimics the bulbs’ native soils.

 

            Tracy refrained from fertilizing in order to isolate the impact of growing in bark. She says that with annual fertilization the bulbs would have multiplied many times over. Because of their dry-land heritage, bulbs are also extremely drought-hardy. This makes them ideal for a low-maintenance landscape.

            Pine bark is a by-product of the lumber industry. At the lumber yards they use a powerful hose to blast the bark off before milling the tree.  You can buy pine bark in bulk or have area nurseries and landscapers deliver it. You can also buy it in a bag at most garden centers. A 2-cubic foot bag will cover a 2'x2' bulb bed 6 inches deep. You can also buy bulbs in bulk from Terra Ceia Farm in northeastern NC. Brent and Becky's Bulbs in southeastern VA is also a great source.

            What to do if you’re buying smaller quantities and want a long season of daffodil blooms? Plant a mix of February Gold, Peeping Tom and Ice Follies.

 

Japanese Maple Marries Bulbs

Yesterday I told you about installing salvaged roofing slate as an edging on this bed. But the reason I was called in on this job had nothing to do with edging and everything to do with understanding what plants need. 

 

I was called in for this job because the maple was losing limbs and the leaf edges were scorching in summer. Diagnosis: the common mistake of planting a Japanese maple--which is an understory tree--in full sun. When they are young, they can take the high heat, but as they mature, they have a mid-life crisis; their roots can't pump enough water to satisfy their leaves. So the leaf edges get crispy and leave the gardener guilt stricken. 

As for the dying limbs, they were just the normal shade-killed branches lower on the tree that die back as the canopy expands and shades out older branches. Nothing to be done there but adopting pruning as an ongoing maintenance task; fodder for the fireplace. 

And if installing a giant umbrella or planting a mature oak tree to at least give the little maple some afternoon shade doesn't fit the budget, there are few things to do. 

My first step was to remove the aggressive liriope that had been planted in this small bed with the maple. They were competing for moisture during the hot summer. Or should I say, out-competing the Japanese maple for moisture in summer. 

I then planted a few dozen bulbs that grow and bloom in fall, winter and early spring, when the Japanese maple is dormant: fall crocus, colchicum, winter aconite, crocus and probably a few other things I don't remember. The plant in the pic is Italian arum. Its filigree'd foliage is unfurled during the fall, winter and spring, then, like the other bulbs,  goes dormant by summer. So the bed is actively changing most of the year--and the client calls me almost every winter to tell me I should come and see all the things that are blooming there.

But the maple has the bed to itself during the summer--no competition for water. 

After planting the "off-season" bulbs, I installed a soaker hose and 3" of shredded hardwood bark mulch, which breaks down into a nice topsoil and feeds the earthworms. 

With this system in place, the client still has to remove the occasional dead twigs--no avoiding that, it's just a sign of age. 

But she hasn't suffered so much as before from singed leaves on her prized Japanese maple.