has experience taught you to leave all the bulbs exposed above the soil like that???

how did you come to use soil rather than media???

do these go in the house for early forcing??? .. how do the clay pots work in the house???

after they bloom .. are they planted in the ground.. or left to go dormant for next year ... and then stored for this same project next fall ...

please keep us posted thru bloom time ... cant wait ...

ken

ps: are these in the garage as you said.. or in grandpas barn???

I agree that Spring is better than Christmas, Jeb!

This year I've done things differently. I had went on a propagating frenzy all summer. I have many new plants in the ground and in a sandy holding bed I made.

Last night/this morning, it got down to 8F! (We'll see what happens....)

I also have some plants and cuttings in my unheated garage up close to the house.

I also bought some roses, shrubs, and one Japanese maple that I bought in spring in a container---all overwintering in the garage. I've never done this before. It's a challenge and stress for me! lol

I have a heater if it gets too cold some nights this winter. I have everything grouped by temperature and light needs. I'm making sure not to water too much. I have fluorescent lights for evergreen type plants. The garage got down to 37F, but it had gotten colder than that on my deck when the plants were outside, and they survived.

Everything is off the floor. I built a shelves that have 2" off Styrofoam on top and am ready to use rope lights underneath IF needed, although I doubt I will.

Also new this year, I bought two MARS HYDRO TS 1000W Led Grow Lights and two stainless steel shelves on wheels with adjustable shelves. I don't have a lot inside under the lights. Lettuce, kale, some phlox cuttings that rooted, a couple of petunias, and some salvia I'm propagating for fun. I have some young cuttings of phlox, penstemon, and dianthus a couple of weeks ago that look promising. If they take, I'll be ecstatic! Growing under lights is a whole new beast vs growing outdoors. Such a learning curve with the different needs. Something to keep me busy during winter!

Oh, nice barn! And the tulips are gonna look great! I hope you post some pics later!

We had a problem with voles this year, in addition to our usual moles. They killed several of my favorite plants! I was furious! I made some homemade traps that mimicked what I saw online and my daughter gave me two of her cats. Only one goes out, because the other has an injury, but she is an excellent hunter! She brings me a vole about every other day!

Ken; I had the same questions!

The bulbs are put into real soil because the soil is very loose and friable - this area was known for potatoes but now the main crops grown are corn, soy and believe it or not, lavender! I learned that the main use for lavender is the oil - it is used for it's antiseptic qualities for severe burns. I thought the main use for lavender was scenting soap! The soil is a fertile sandy loam that was dug up from next to an ancient chicken coop. Clay pots are fine, just have to keep an eye on watering. Shallow planting equals more root space I guess. Any more questions?

Growing under lights is where you don't think you can manage to squeeze one more plant under the lights and you are able to fit nine other additional plants just fine!

Voles are horrible little creatures that have eaten a whole row of old Baptisia clumps. Ate them all. I have (had) a nice patch of Rubrum Lilies that the voles took out completely last winter. Ug.

I will do my best to keep you updated with any progress/loss that take place!

Exotic Star Amaryllis blooming today, kind of subdued.

I got alot to do this spring. We bought a camp this past July and it needs some landscaping. Since I have been concentrating on the inside I did very little outside except planting some Siberian mums and daffodils. I want to edge all around the home and garage so we can mow with just the tractor. I am planning on very low maintenance. I am going to thin out my grasses and groundcovers and transplant them to camp. Also want to root some pussywillow and forsythia for planting. Thank goodness there is a bucket for the tractor. It will save alot of physical labor.

Very low maintenance is the way to go!! A couple of cultivated areas around here will probably be seeded with grass next spring. Simplicity can be very pleasing!

Jeb, we want to enjoy camp, not work weeding all the time. We want to sit back and enjoy the wooded privacy and outdoor activities the area has. The only neighbors we can see have 4 legs and moo.

It is fairly remote here too - my home is in front of a cornfield that is in front of acres of woodland. I had a friend that called this place The land that God forgot about meaning that here is so far from there that even the omnipotent being lost track!

Here are some garage tulips from last year. Planting them in real soil "dirt' makes them strong, gives them good color and I think that they last a little longer and are more durable than bulbs grown in a peat based media. i plant them in the same soil I grow my vegetables in. They usually get tossed to the critters after they bloom. Chipmunks love the bulbs too!

Growing new varieties for next year.

early spring snow storm

Parrot mix

I like to think of spring starting straight after 12th night! That helps me tolerate the gloom of January. As do these brave little flowers. The February Gold daffodils are up a few inches and it won’t be too many weeks before they’re in flower.

I'm juggling some house projects so my mind hasn't been wrapped up in spring...yet. Plus there just wasn't a lot of joy in it for me this past season -- has a lot to do with lack of separation between work and home during the pandemic, I'm one of those people who just needs that separation, I'm really looking forward to getting called back to the office, it can't come soon enough.

It felt good to strap on the x-country skis and tool around the property a bit this afternoon (gotta work off Christmas breakfast before Christmas dinner...), but not enough snow for good gliding. I'm looking forward to enjoying Jan and Feb for the skiing and the quiet time -- for me there is joy in envisioning the possibilities for the upcoming season and planning for it. I'm kind of bummed I haven't received any catalogs yet -- what's going on with that this year? Nothing like a good seed or plant catalog to get my gardening juices flowing. I'll have to sit down sometime in Jan and make my seed-starting timeline chart and see if there's anything I need (or want) to order. I do want to order a few natives from Prairie Moon, and I have a list of things that I'd like to check into after reading that semi-recent thread on here about tools that are worth it.

I just put out some rose cone contraptions this week on my two "Royal Jubilee" English roses, temps in the teens overnight so I figured it's time to cover. This is the first time I've used these, and I have to say they seem pretty sturdy and were really easy to put on. Only downside is I had to trim the canes down to fit underneath the cover, and as these grow larger over time they might not fit. But, for younger, smaller plants they seem like they will work well.

I have noticed buds fattening up on a lot of bushes and trees, and my sister mentioned the same thing the other day -- wonder if that means spring weather might arrive a little earlier this year. Who knows.

I couldn’t agree more about the excitement of spring!! Well that’s after all the cleanup of course LOL.

My spring list has grown much larger than anticipated...always does. I’d like to divide and move lots around, spread my long overdue mulching, plant overwintered mums, start some seeds etc. Plus I need to do some power washing and painting. But those don’t excite me...

What does...are the new trees and shrubs I just planted and the delphiniums too! Also several different kind of seeds I direct sowed. I’m hoping the crazy weather is kind to them and they all return.

Here are the mums I’m trying to overwinter. Only time well tell how many survive. I’ve already lost one if not two so far.... hoping to have a decent survival rate as I would love for some more fall color.....

Of course they’re not this colorful anymore as they are now going dormant.

Come on Spring!!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Fun thread! I, like Floral, think of "spring" beginning much earlier. For me, the winter solstice is the best day of the year. At that point, the days start getting longer, and I don't care if it is only a minute at a time lol. They're going in the right direction, and that's all that counts. And usually, since one is busy with the holidays both before and after the solstice, it is after the rush of the holidays, when the calm of the new year sets in, that it really hits you, and by then you were so busy you didn't really notice the two weeks before (the darkest days) and by now you're already two weeks into longer days!

Then I get so busy with my seeds and wintersowing that that carries me into February, when the hellebores start blooming, the early bulbs start (I love to look for the crocus every day in the lawn, hoping to see the little spots of yellow and purple!).

Unfortunately there isn't much "new" to look forward to in the garden this year, just like this past spring. We're all unemployed here, with uncertain chances of getting our jobs back, so money is getting tighter and tighter, which means no new plants. Like last spring, I will once more have to push my foundation planting plans to at least next fall, and live with a bare house another spring. No new plants for any other beds either.

My seed list has also been cut waaaaay down (it's amazing how those $3 packets of seed add up!). In one way, the pandemic might have saved my seed-starting sanity. I have a box of old seeds - some of them ten years and older! - and every year I do a wintersowing workshop at the local library (which was cancelled this year because, well, 2020). I always thought about giving away these seeds at the workshop, but then hesitated - if they didn't germinate because of their age, I didn't want the attendees to get discouraged and discontinue wintersowing. It was an annual little agony for me, but each year that the box of seeds got older, it was easier to make the decision NOT to give them away.

So this year, I'M going to be sowing them lol. I can't really afford lots of new seed, so I'm digging into that box! I don't know if they will germinate for me either, lol, but after 20 years of wintersowing I'll know the risks beforehand and the reasons afterwards! So, I only bought about ten packets of new seeds, and will try many if not most of the seeds in the old box. I'm looking forward to starting my wintersowing in a couple of weeks.

I will be doing some transplanting, clearing out some neglected beds, returning them to "lawn" (or what passes for lawn in my yard) so I do have that to look forward to. And as GardenHo says, there's always the usual mulching, weeding, getting things looking good etc.

My husband was a doll this year and I think he shredded every single leaf on my property this fall, so I am looking out the window at a HUGE pile of shredded leaves! Yay! I did get most of the mulch down already - I always wait till after it gets cold and the ground freezes, to discourage the voles and mice from nestling into my nice shredded leaf mulch! - but honestly it's getting later and later in the year for that to happen, and while the ground may freeze one day, two days later it's warm again outside! I often wonder how the poor critters are adjusting to this global climate change. Anyway, I take care of another garden in the neighborhood and have yet to mulch the beds there, so I will be doing that in January. And then have enough leaf mulch to put more down in spring.

So nice to see the spring pics, Jeb. It's always a bit of a jolt for me to see, in winter, pics of my garden in bloom. I think I kind of forget just how lush and colorful those blooms really were!

:)
Dee