Planting Bulbs

It's bulb planting time again.  I did a detailed post about this back in 2023.  This year I planted all of the Daffodils bulbs that I dug up in early summer.  They were either in an inconvenient place, or the clump had gotten too dense and needed to be divided.  One batch was a double Daffodil that I got from TulipWorld.com and it didn't turn out to be what I ordered.  They stand behind their products, so they gave me a gift card in the amount of the mislabeled bulbs.  I used that to buy some Squill and more Snowdrops to add to my existing plantings.

I had planned to add these some time ago and I took photos of the bed in the spring so I would know where I wanted to add the bulbs and where there were already bulbs that I did not want to disturb.

Its so easy to forget where bulbs already are and how many you really need, so photos are important.

Lately I have seen a lot of digging in my landscape beds.  The squirrels are burying Hickory nuts, but they aren't the culprits.  Either a Opossum or Raccoon is sniffing around and finding Daffodil bulbs and digging around those then (of course) not eating anything, just leaving a mess.  Since I use fertilizer, and because freshly turned soil is also an invitation to snooping, I made sure to sprinkle granular Repels All over all of the disturbed soil.  When I've planted more expensive bulbs in years past I have even pinned hardware cloth over the area to really lock them out.  So far nothing has dug up the new plantings.

And today I started the long chore of lifting, cleaning, dividing and storing my Dahlia tubers.  It is way too big a job to do all at once.  I divide and trim them in the fall instead of the spring because otherwise I end up with way too much volume to store. Today I dug the Figaro Dahlias that I started from seed, one of my border height varieties (Binky), and then one of my easiest to replace varieties, Brown Sugar.  This gets me back in practice before I start on the ones that are really important to me.  I have at least two more afternoons to spend on them.  I limit myself to two or three hours at a time so I don't get tired and start taking shortcuts.  Plus I sort of enjoy it.  Tonight we have a frost advisory for the fourth time.  The Dahlias are shutting down but still look really goo.