All Bulbs Planted!

I finished up a lot of garden chores yesterday -- emptied the rain barrel and put it in storage, emptied all the compost buckets into the veggie garden, emptied ceramic pots for storage over the winter, and I planted the last of my bulbs yesterday. Now it is the long winter wait for spring when I once again will see all those beautiful bulbs bloom. Seeing the first blooms really helps me shake off the winter blues. Don't get me wrong, I love winter, but only for the first few months, after that I just want to go to sleep until it is over. The only way I stay awake is cook and bake! So stay tuned for recipes!

New Approach to Bulbs

Now that my garden is so full of tulips, I am finding that when I try to plant more tulips, which has to be done in the fall when the tulips are invisible, I am digging up tulips that I have already planted! I have tried marking areas in the spring, but the summer is long, and I usually un-mark the areas during that time. I have tried maps, but without specific distances, it only gives me a vague idea as to where things are planted.

I have decided to experiment with a new approach. I bought a couple mixed packs of tulips from Menards, purple mix -- I'm hoping for some nice ones. I always save the pots from my garden plants, so I had a lot of them. In each of these pots I planted one tulip bulb. I also packed compost around the pots.

I sprinkled bone meal over the top of the pots and covered the whole deal with leaves. To ward off curious squirrels, I sprinkled cayenne pepper over the leaves. I started using cayenne pepper as part of my bulb planting routine a couple of years ago. It works pretty well at keeping the squirrels out of newly planted anything!
I am hoping that the tulips will sprout in the spring and I will be able to transplant them where ever I see a gap. If this works, I will be using it in larger scale in following years to fill out my garden without disturbing the current occupants. I figure my vegetable garden will be a good place to overwinter them as I won't be using it during the winter anyway!