Good score! I havent tried WMT.

My Home Depot sold out at only 50% off. I guess in years past they have had so many they are 90% off at the end.

I did buy some daffodils and got those planted. I bought some hyacinth as well. I love them and grow them in pots.

I still have leaves all over because it rained so much that they have been wet for more than a month. I am hoping that these warm rainy days will melt the snow and then I will go out and hand rake in the hopes of getting the worst of them into the compost, wet or dry. Usually we chop them with the lawn mower back into the lawn, but that doesn’t work if they are wet.

You will enjoy all those spring flowers!

I planted bulbs last weekend. I hope to finish up this weekend.

It has been raining for like foreeever...

We get a break today and it looks like Friday-Monday, it's raining again eh.

I am not sure I can dig because we have had a bunch of single digit temps. And our most recent predicted rain was another 3 inches of slushy snow, not at all what I was wanting! We may not see bare ground again until spring.

oh I'll have to check out HD now too lol, as if I need an excuse to go there.

I know the rain hasn't stopped at all. Some parts of my garden are a little soupy! Because of all the rain we haven't been able to do a final lawn mow and leaf blower like we wanted. ugh!

Wow! You really scored!

I keep saying I'm going to plant the last daffs and tulips but then find some excuse not to. It's not hard.

Maybe tomorrow.... unless it rains...

We finally had a nice day after several days and nights where it didn’t get below freezing, so snow melted in areas with south or west facing slopes. I raked the leaves off the areas without snow and planted one plant I had forgotten to heal in before the cold snap. I hope that it survives.

Did you go check out HD, Kali-Deere and if so did you get more bulbs?

I also finished things up today. It was a slimy, muddy mess but it's done.

I guess that means I can look around a little at the clearance racks, eh? Might be in the area of HD tomorrow, and forcing a few bulbs is always fun :)

Ah lucky I'm jealous you were able to get out in the garden. I swear it has not stopped raining here since June lol. I stopped by the HD closest to my house and it had no bulbs, guess I waited too long. Though I did find a few more anemone packets for 50¢ at Walmart haha

I notice the forecast this week calls for no storms, no rain with temps in the high 30s - might be a chance for anyone who missed getting bulbs in to do it this week. :-)

I have been putting on my philosophical hat this year. I wonder if it's better to plant later (not due to temps) but to avoid some of this rainy wet season - much closer towards freeze or better to do it in mid-late fall to let roots steep in.

With that same statement, once the bulbs are in, they are there 365 days a year....

Because you are south, your view will be different than many of us in New England, a1an. By now, the soil here is cold enough so not a lot of root growth will take place. This also is an abnormal year as far as precipitation; typically early to mid autumn is the best time for planting in the northeast.

Yes, well aware of posters and zone differences right now..... I've never planted past a hard freeze though - always at least 5 weeks out before we get the BRRRR....

Babs, so are you saying the goal is to allow the bulb to develop roots in the fall? Does it matter? What would be the problem if the bulb stayed dormant until the soil starts to warm up in the spring? And I often find that the foliage starts coming up too soon sometimes, indicating that maybe there's been too much warm soil and too much root development.

I agree that this year is more precipitation than usual, but don't we always expect to get more rain in the fall?

Per the philisophical hat response this morning and the MANY replies on how X has planted as long as the soil is workable (even a warm day past hard freeze days), all replies seem to suggest it's just as fine come spring.

What would be interesting - and maybe next year I will do this. Split a bulb bed in half. Plant 4 weeks before a known hard freeze. Depending on the weather, plant the other half when it's close to indefinite hard freeze. The only challenge would be to keep the ~cured~ bulbs healthy - same state of health in planting in plot A vs plot B.

I would be curious on the cause/effects of A/B when looking at the differences.

PM2, my goal with bulbs is to get root but not top development for all bulbs, and most especially garlic. My flower bulbs tend not to sprout too soon, either spring or fall, so the sooner I plant flower bulbs the more root development I get. We tend to get soil frozen enough so that it doesn’t drain in spring for a couple of weeks, unlike in areas farther south that tend not to actually have frozen soil, so my results are likely different then areas where the soil temperatures stay at or above 32F.

a1an - I love those kind of experiments. I hope you are able to do that and post your experiences if you do. :-)

Babs, that's right, you are colder than we are here and that makes sense the way you do it there. I do get the early bulb foliage, sometimes even in late fall. And I don't get the soil not draining in the spring either. I barely get a puddle in my yard any time of year. But really, no matter when I plant bulbs, they seem to always come up looking great, except in exceptionally cold snowy springs, where the foliage on some of the daffs gets beat up.

That will be interesting to see what happens. I think most people will agree that newly planted bulbs, especially daffodils, are later to grow and bloom than established plantings but I'm curious to see how much you can play around with bloom dates coming from early or late plantings.

I used to dig my 'Erlicheer' daffodils and replant in the fall so that they would come up later. Without the summer storage and left in the ground the noses would start coming up in the fall, and then a winter warm spell would bring them on far enough so that the next hard freeze would kill the foliage back. Eventually I got tired of the digging and after a couple sad looking springs a strong enough spring freeze killed them outright.

Jonquillas like 'Hillstar' and 'Pipit' also sprout too early, but even though the frozen leaves look terrible they've never died completely.

I dug up daff bulbs after the foliage died in summer and potted them up. I was rushing and just threw as many as I could in a gallon pot and covered them with soil and they sat in a half sun position all summer, getting watered with the rest of my pots. I went to plant them this fall - about mid October - and they all had a good set of roots on them. I had to tease them apart to replant them where I needed them, so it will be interesting to me to see what they do this spring.

I also had to dig and move in mid October, a grouping of hyacinths when I was renovating a bed. They also already had a very healthy root system. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed they will come back fine next spring.

Katob, I wonder if you are more a zone 7 than zone 6? I am zone 6a and even though I have early, mid and late bulbs, I haven't had that many springs where the daffodils look really awful. On the other hand, when I order new daffodils, I am now ordering more late varieties. And I've stopped ordering crocus, because some critter keeps eating them all.

Climate change has impacted some of my gardening decisions. Our winters are still cold enough, but the days or weeks of thaws and warmth are much more frequent then they used to be. Springs are more unpredictable and erratic. So much so, that I have adjusted my focus to more plants I love during late spring, early summer and not so much the early spring blooms that I love.

Prairiemoon I think I'm still 6a. We were down to single digits already this year but like you said it's the erratic weather which has been doing things in. On a consistently cold winter things come up fine, but for the last two springs it's been a disaster. Thunderstorms and hail in February after a 70 degree day, down to single digit weather a few days later. I might as well live in the midwest! lol

I used to have to wait until mid March to see snowdrops, now I start looking during any sunny day in February. I guess that's not the worst thing... until the hail destroys them...

Katob - I agree with you, if we were just colder all winter we would be fine and better with snow cover. This year, we've been having the teen temperatures without the snow cover in Nov/Dec. I'm not having as much of the weather you are. Definitely not seeing snowdrops in February, but in March. But I have lost snow drops in the past few years too. Thunder and lightening during snow storms, which I never ever saw when I was growing up. It used to be you'd depend on getting a January thaw maybe once every year or two, but now we get multiple thaws all winter and then quickly back to cold temps. And an early warming in spring, starting all the plants growing and then a surprise cold snap or snow storm and I'm out there trying to cover them all with milk crates and Remay. [g]

I'm not expecting to continue to see the kind of spring we used to have and therefore, I've shifted gears and I'm focusing more on late spring early summer plantings to look forward to and investing more money and effort into adding to those plantings.

fess up guys. All this talk about bulb planting is because you're tired of the cold weather already and you got spring fever ;-0

LOL - You hit it on the nose, a1an. :-)

Ear Waving Hands Emoji right back at you

Final dirt playing task of the year for me today. Laid down some compost, winter mulched some shrubs, finished the burlap on others. Bring on old man winter.

Prairie - did you dig up the daffodils because you had wanted to move them or for another reason? I just leave mine in the ground each year, hope I wasn't supposed to be digging them up.

I feel like I had a bad garden year if that makes any sense, nothing really jumped and bloomed even remotely like what it had the previous year. Everything just looked a little duller and scragglier.
Yesterday a got another huge chunk of bulbs planted since I was able to dig through a few inches of ground. I also put some bulbs in containers and put them in the garage with the other container plants that I'm over-wintering. Though has anyone in a cold zone attempted to over-winter spanish lavender? I have two plants in containers and two plants in the garden. They're not supposed to be hardy in my zone but I'm experimenting with the two in the garden since it's a very protected area. For the ones in the containers, do the go dormant like roses might? I'd like to just drag them into the garage like my other containers but I'm not sure if lavender can go dormant. I do keep my mandevilla over winter each year in my office on the window sill. Stops blooming and growing and just kind of exists until spring lol.

A1an you're totally right. I always get all twitchy this time of year haha. I hate having to acknowledge the end of the gardening season. I'm very envious of the areas of the country that get a longer gardening season - I keep joking with my husband that we should move to a warmer zone so I can garden more.

Lavender doesn't go dormant like roses. It's evergreen and although it doesn't actively grow in winter it still needs good light and some moisture. But it doesn't want much heat, so your office is probably too warm. A glazed porch or unheated spare room with a big window might work. I very much doubt it will survive your winter outside. Spanish lavender doesn't even survive mine.

We got some new snow last night, but before that we again had some above freezing, relatively dry weather, so one day last week I raked more leaves off the parts of the lawn that were newly emerged from the prior snow, so that task is done and the compost is fairly full. I also was outside yesterday and got the peony and phlox cut back to reduce overwintering of disease organisms. So I guess that I am now about as prepared for winter as is likely.

Kali, you don’t need to dig up daffodils annually. If they get so crowded that they aren’t blooming well, dig up and separate them, but I haven’t had that happen yet and most of mine are huge clumps that have been in place for about 20 years and still bloom profusely. You also might need to dig them up to move them if it gets too shaded where they are. Or you might want to divide large clumps so you have more rather than buying them.

The weather was nice on Saturday so I planted my last bag of daffodils. Time will tell whether they made it through the winter. Fingers crossed.

CTGG, I don’t think you will find that they have any problems. I have planted bulbs after Thanksgiving here in much colder NH, so you should be fine. The usual guideline is as long as you can still dig, bulbs can be planted.

Kali - On the daffodil move - I moved some of them because a nearby shrub had grown and they were coming up under the dripline of the shrub, which was not looking great and not getting them enough sun. I moved another grouping because they had started to bloom less. I felt they must have multiplied and become too crowded. When I dug them up, there was a ton of bulbs there, so now that they are all replanted, I’ll be curious to see how they perform this spring. I suspect though that it will take until the next spring before they will be performing at their peak.

As far as leaving them in the same place - you are supposed to be able to do that - but they do multiply, some varieties more so than others, and if they get overcrowded, you will see a decline in blooming. So as long as they are blooming well, you don’t have to move them. When you eventually do move them, you find that you have a lot more bulbs than you started out with, so that’s a plus. And you can get a whole lot more bulbs, if you dig them up and replant routinely, maybe every 3-4 years, each time you replant, you have another bulb producing new bulbs. It’s like that old shampoo commercial - “And she told two friends, and she told two friends…”. LoL.

Which I now see, is pretty much what Babs said. ;-)