Being around the house more these days, I now have the time and energy to work a little bulb magic! Living in a tiny house with a small yard on the fringes of East Sacramento’s “Fabulous Forties” can be a little deflating at times. The “Fab Forties” is a neighborhood of mature tree-lined streets and well-kept mansions and bungalows. They do it up big time for Christmas, 4th of July and many homes in the area are professionally landscaped.
My Christmas light display will never come close to the wonder and grandeur of The Forties. My flowerbeds will never contain the hundreds (thousands?) of tulips and other bulbs that stop traffic every spring. Why? Because it’s an expensive proposition, even scaled down. And tulips need replanting every year. And if I were to buy my bulbs individually at nearly a dollar each… well, forget it. But you know what? I like living a scaled down life right now. It can be described with all kinds of good words like “affordable” and “manageable” and “simple”.
Come to think of it, I don’t want to be the “crazy tulip lady” or “crazy Christmas lights lady”, spending thousands of dollars each year and exhausting myself with the pressure to outdo my neighbors or myself from the previous year. I’m OCD enough without having to add Spring and Christmas into the mix.
Still, I thought about the tulips… “Why not me?” After doing a little online research, I found Colorblends, a bulk supplier of bulbs with great prices and a good reputation. After perusing their online catalog, I ended up ordering 100 tulip bulbs ($35) and 25 daffodils. The tulips will line my walkway like a mini version of the Fab 40’s displays. It won’t be as dense or expansive, but a hundred tulip bulbs is still pretty cool considering right now I put on a sweeping display of zero.
And, OMG, Colorblends offers… well, color blends of different tulip varieties that develop and bloom much like a fireworks display. Varying heights, colors and maturation times ensure a nice long display that comes on quietly and steadily, then explodes into bloom like the State Fair fireworks display. The blend I ended up going with for Spring, 2014 is the Jacques and Jill™ blend. It’s breathtaking and lively.
I wanted colors that will mesh well with what I’ve already planted, like my pinky-peach Abutilon, my magenta Phygelius, and yellow-pink-orange Cuphea. I think of my new tulips as a Fab Forties display in micro. Micro-fab.
Jacques and Jill Tulip blend from Colorblends (Photo courtesy of Colorblends)
As for the daffodils, I was drawn to ‘Pimpernel’s’ tangerine cups and softer yellow petals. I plan to plant those in a single clump closer to the street. The nice thing about daffodils is that they naturalize. You plant them once and they grow and multiply year after year.
I used to find bulb planting in Sacramento clay to be quite tedious and frustrating, until I discovered the bulb auger
‘Pimpernel’ Daffodil from Colorblends (Photo courtesy of Colorblends)
One last note. Tulips require 6 weeks of chilling in temperate parts. I guess that’s one thing I didn’t think about… how I’m going to fit 100 tulip bulbs in my cabinet-depth Samsung fridge. I know, I know. It’s a nice problem to have. And sorry, Kim. ♥
Your comparison of the typical bulb planter to a beer can being crushed is exactly my experience. I’ve always wondered about the bulb auger. Thanks for the rec.
I am in a place where I am going to garden to my heart’s content, even though I don’t have soil of my own. If there is a will, there is a way. Plus I’m leaning into the fact that things don’t have to look a certain way (figuratively). I have nobody to impress and all I have to do is make myself happy. Seems like a good deal to me! Sounds like you can relate…
Good luck with the bulbs. Post pics when the time comes so we can all enjoy vicariously?
Hey, Katie! I will definitely post pics. Sounds like somebody needs a community garden plot! And you are exactly right. Who cares if I don’t live in a mansion and can’t afford to hire gardeners to plant hundreds of bulbs for me; I LOOOOOOOOOOOVE tulips and daffs and I’m super excited about my micro-display. And I will have done it myself, at a great price, which is very satisfying.
I would say that tulips, for the most part, do not come back up and multiply year after year after year UNLESS you live in certain, colder areas, of Sacramento. In the front yard of our first home, now a rental home btw? Venus planted 10 tulip bulbs that first fall. It’s now ten years later. Last year? About 100 tulips sprouted. We haven’t had the same luck in our new yard. The tulips have come back up, but not multiplied. HOWEVER — the daffodils have. Venus once again planted ten daffodil bulbs during that first fall in the new home. Last year? About 50-60 came up….
Bill, you are absolutely correct. Unless you plant species tulips, which are not nearly as showy, you will have to repeat the process of buying, chilling and planting tulips each year. What variety did Venus plant?!
Daffodils are much better naturalizers. I’ve found that you can get a second show out of tulips the following year, but the display is much more sparse, and flowers are shorter and smaller. You just can’t count on them like you can daffodils; we just don’t get “Holland cold” in Sacramento. Tulips are a luxury in which, this year, I decided to indulge. 😉
I am not sure, Angela. I do know it was ordered out of a Breck’s catalog, but that’s about all I can tell you. They put on a red and white show and have completely taken over a planter box out in front. It’s always an amazing show in the spring. We’re famous for microclimates out here, so maybe it just gets cold enough for those tulips to come back up and multiply every spring. I just know that they do, where in other areas, they do not.