Stick to just Daffs. They can handle clay soil and come back stronger each year with little effort. Do plant them deep. Eight inches should be good.

Overplant with annuals by all means.

I finally removed 4-5 inches of clay and dug in huge amounts of organic material - it drains!!! And bulbs are happy.

I also have amended clay soil. It is amended but I would not say greatly. The Daffs like the other poster said will do great in your soil. They grow great in my zone 5. If you do amend your soil some you can use the Darwin Hybrid Tulips. Both the Daffs & Darwin Hybrid Tulips come back every year. You need to leave the foliage up until it completely yellows out though to feed the bulb for next years blooms. Also for the Tulips I like the Apeldoorn which are a Darwin Hybrid & they come back great. Tulips are heavy feeders so do give them bulb food in early spring & again after they are done blooming. Give the Tulips good drainage if you can when planted. The Daffs are not heavy feeders & you plant them & never look back. Both Daffs & the Apeldoorns in my yard multiply fast. I plant both Daffs & Darwin Tulips close to 8" deep in my zone 5. Don't dig them up plant over them or around them. At that depth digging is way to much work. I plant right next to them & the foliage of the annual covers their area good.

I have extremely heavy clay soil, the kind that holds water forever & is rock hard during droughts, which it seldom is since I am also the lowest home in the area, the one where everything drains. When this subdivision was built all the topsoil was removed by the builder and the heavy clay sub-soil from the basement areas was graded out over the area.

It is almost impossible to improve/amend this soil enough for large garden beds of loamy soil, especially when you start with a totally blank slate and have to buy everything. Since I wanted (and have) a large garden, I have learned to compromise and to plant what will grow well and use every trick there is to grow some other less likely things as well. I grow mixed borders, primarly shrub borders with sturdy perennials, grasses, and several thousand bulbs.

One very basic trick is to use things like poultry grit, crushed gravel, Profile (fired clay bits) or other "hard" products that don't rot away. The problem with amending solid clay with organic material is that you have to keep amending it, and amending it with huge quantities of stuff, either from the garden itself (homemade compost) or by buying it. I'm not saying don't use compost etc., but you have to think truckloads for large beds.

Pocket planting of shrubs and large perennials is also a very useful concept in a garden with impossible soil. Plant the shrub one third to one half out of the ground and build the bedding area up around them. Check the term "clay busters" online & various garden books for some good ideas. Topdressing of beds with organic mulch & compost over a long period of time will help a great deal as well in creating usable beds. Creating shallow planting beds for annuals and turning in the dying plants in fall can also help create useful planting areas over time.

Here are some suggestions for bulbs. As others have said, daffodils are a good option. They can handle amended clay soil. I plant them about 6-8 inches deep and then top with several more inches of mulch. I often plant 5-7 of them with a single daylily. The daylily doesn't mind clay and its foliage will hide the daff foliage. Another option is to use miniature daffodils which do not need to be nearly as deep. Minis work best near the house where you can see them well.

Use raised beds for your bulbs. Even a few inches will help. A foot is much better. I generally open the base soil slamming a pitchfork repeatedly into the clay (very hard work) and working in some gravel & then add the good stuff on top.

Use lots of minor bulbs. They are so much easier & quicker to plant in clay than large bulbs. They can be planted a couple of inches deep and topped with an inch or two of mulch. They are wonderful around shrubs or large perennials and can even be planted right on the rootball of larger plantings. Planting them near large thirsty plants seems to keep the soil dry enough for the bulbs. Think in terms of at leat 50-100 of each type bulb. Then add another 50-100 each year.

I treat most tulips as annuals. If I am hoping to keep them longer than a season, I use them in a raised bed. I've had the best luck with long term tulips using the Greigii tulips, although the Darwins do some returning. In my regular beds (3-6 inch raised beds) I use a lot of species tulips. These return well.

I also use lots of summer lilies as well in my gardens. Many of these get planted in some awfully heavy soil. I use a step-on bulb planter and heavy work boots to get them into the ground. Some will only last a few years when planted this way. As they are relatively cheap to buy, to me they are worth it. Some of them do quite well and make nice big clumps, although it takes 4-5 years.

Try some of the bulbs that like more moisture, such as Allium triquetrum, Camassia, Eranthis hyemalis, Erythronium, Fritillaria meleagris & Alba, Galanthus & Leucojum aestivum. Fritilaria meleagris (Checkered lily) and Camassias have been good ones for me as have some of the early spring woodland type plants, like trilliums, shooting stars, & Virginia bluebells. Some of the early rising sedges like Carex Bowles Golden and Tradescantia (spiderwort) Sweet Kate with chartreuse foliage make nice companions for bulbs and will do well in moist clay soil as well.

Thank you everyone!
I really appreciate the info and encouragement. Now I'm really excited!
I'm off to plan my attack on the front bed; I'm such a graph paper dork.
Also, off to look up the higher moisture bulbs that Leslie listed - I had no idea of my options!

Again, many thanks.
Lara

Hi, I wanted to post a followup and say that I'm in the middle of planting lots of bulbs, many of which were recommended by Leslie above. Thanks again! So I have two questions now:
1. I have some tulips I salvaged from last year and some unknown bulbs, and want to grow them in pots. I know I need to give them a little water over the winter, when the dirt isn't frozen and the air temp is >40. How much should I give? And is my unheated garage an appropriate place for them to winter? Also, how deeply do I need to plant these? I don't want them popping up in January, as they'll then have to stay indoors. Ok, I guess that was several questions disguised as 1.

2. While digging an area for my outdoor bulbs, I came across some interesting "dirt"; we had a pine tree removed and its stump ground down 2 summers ago, so what I ended up digging into was fairly compact shredded tree and decomposing roots. This has all been completely burried, and even has what appears to be mycelium strands running through it. I presume that since this was essentially "green" material when it was buried, its decomposition is temoprarily depleting the soil around it, and it is not appropriate planting medium. Is this true? I was planning to plant in that hole with ammended clay from another area of the yard, but there is still (I presume) lots of buried tree shreds in the dirt around the hole. Will this be an issue? Should I just fill in the hole and put my bulbs elsewhere?

Thank you in advance, and sorry for the novel.

Lara

I don't know about planting where the tree was--I haven't had that happen to me yet.

I plant my bulbs everywhere, willy-nilly, and more than I care to think about. Most of them come up, bloom, and bloom in subsequent years, but it's definitely not 100%. I don't end up planting many bulbs at the "proper" depth, because I always buy too many bulbs to dig that deep for every last one of them, assuming I CAN dig that deep. Many bulbs adjust themselves to their preferred depth anyways.

My soil is clay, amended clay, clay with rocks over it, or clay with sand over it and rocks on top of that. The one thing I do is plant my tulips and other dryland bulbs in areas of my garden that have dryland conditions. They get lots of sun in summer, and not all that much water. The group includes xeric perennials: Lavender, Yucca, Lewisia, Dalea, Salvia and Bearded Iris to give you an idea of my best tulip-growing areas.

In the areas where Hostas, Hellebores and Japanese Maples thrive, I plant mostly Narcissus, Erythronium, Scilla, Muscari, Eranthis, Hyacinths and Lilies of all sorts.

I think it helps to consider the kind of environment the bulbs originated in (Tulips in Central Asia--the "-istans") and try to plant your bulbs in environments which approximate it. It also seems to help to "not know any better". My mother is still amazed at the way I casually jam plants into the ground with no apparent plan or thought and have so many of them thrive. I do sort of have a strategy: I wander around with the plant or bulbs and "ask the plants" where they would like to go. It seems to work. A little common sense helps, as well. Don't plant cactus in a bog.

Keep a record of where you planted what, and note what does well where, and what doesn't. It doesn't have to be a fancy record. I have a spreadsheet, and I note my plantings like this: "Tulipa Van der Neer. Orange. Fall 2005. Center Back, also containers." That's sufficient for my needs--I know to look for orange tulips in the center bed in the back garden the following and subsequent springs. Try not to make the same mistake twice.

Plenty of people have bulbs in clay. They just amend the soil for good drainage. My county is nothing but clay soils, and bulbs abound in spring!

Lara, don't be disappointed if the tulips you salvaged from last year come up but don't bloom. That's just tulips, and that's why most of us plant them as annuals and replace them each year.

If you put your other bulbs in fairly good sized pots, I don't see why they would have to be over-wintered in your garage. Bulbs can take alot of cold, they even need it in order to bloom well. However, I live aLOT further southan than you do, so I would advise you to ask around in your area: the county extension office is a great resource for these kinds of questions. As far as water is concerned, they will need moisture (rain or snow) every week to ten days or so. I rarely have to water bulbs through the winter, but then, this has been a rare year.

Lara I had this same question at the beginning of the year and again this fall, I forgot that I already had this idea this spring. If you use the search feature on this forum and put in "bulbs in pots" you'll see my post from this spring and a few other very helpful post that address this same question. I think the most important things to remember are:
1) Bulbs have to grow roots so you just can't keep them in the fridge until spring then throw them in some pots and think that they will grow. I keep having this idea until I realize that bulbs have to grow roots!
2) Bulbs need a cold period but during this cold period less water is better. If you read through most of the post you'll see that more people had problems with bulb rot than anything else. This problem seems to come from the freeze and thaw affect that you get in pots and most people actually suggest that you cover your pots with plastic.

I'm getting a real late start on my bulbs this year so I plan on doing them all in pots because I know that I'm going to be jealous of all the other bulbs that I see blooming this spring if I don't plant anything. I plan on putting them in pots and keeping them in a warmer area for a few weeks while they grow roots and then I'm going to move them to our garage for the rest of the winter. I don't know if this will work but hey I'll never find out unless I try.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

Strouper