WELL, MY FAVORITE month of the year and absolutely favorite holiday is only 2 days away — Mayday!
Sunny spring seems to be finally progressing. The grass seems to be growing faster than we can gas up the mower!
With daytime conditions sunny, along with cool evenings, the plants around your yard are slowly, steadily breaking dormancy.
With the emergence of leaves and longer day-lengths, gardeners’ minds turn to the planting of flower beds, baskets, pots and more in the vegetable garden.
It is now, however, that we need to not forget all those wonderful flowers that brought us such joy with their bright colors breaking up the gray drizzle of winter.
Your bulbs may be dwindling, the bright yellow of the daffodils fading, but your concern and workload should not be. A huge mistake made by many gardeners is to neglect the “after flower care” of their spring bulbs.
In order to ensure a great show next year, some crucial tasks need to be performed as soon as the blooms begin to fade.
First and foremost, completely remove the flowerhead in plants like tulips, fritillaria, lilies and various irises. This includes removing the first few leaves also.
These are not “true leaves,” but actually part of the flowerhead and must be severed to get the full advantage. Removing the flowerhead does several things — all beneficial to the plant.
With the flower gone as soon as it fades, it’s delicate tissue is absent, and so is the prime source of food and habitat for disease, mold and bugs.
With the dead-heading of the flower, the plant does not redirect its energy in order to facilitate reproduction but rather responds to its age-old mission to procreate by producing growth that will cause even more flowers next year.
Simply removing the flowers won’t necessarily get us there, however. We now need to pump up that bulb — its stored food source has been depleted in this year’s drive to bloom.
This is accomplished first by keeping as many true leaves green and healthy for as long as possible. With the bloom removed, treat these leafy specimens as your most cherished plants. Water them, foliar feed them, weed and cultivate. Treat them like the kings and queens they are.
In plants like crocus, scilla, daffodils and lilies, strive to have the leaves last as long as possible.
As the tips of the leaves brown and wither, cut away only those old parts, leaving the rest to photosynthesize.
Then as the tips of the remaining parts brown, scissor it down again, always leaving the green parts for as long as possible.
Add slow-release organic fertilizer, like blood meal, bone meal, kelp meal and the like, again cultivating lightly into the soil. Do not overlook this nutrient replenishment, that could bring on your plant’s demise.
You must add and cultivate again in September using bone meal or a bulb-booster fertilizer.
If you want to move your bulbs, thin or divide, a perfect time is just after they bloom. Dead-head, then dig up, replant and water in extremely well.
Doing this now saves all the labor of digging, drying and storage until a fall planting.
With this trick in mind, remember to look for old pots or bulbs on sale at various outlets. For pennies on the dollar, you can purchase this plant now for great flowers next year.
As we wait for temperatures to rise sufficiently for our summer flowers, let’s all take this opportunity to reward and care for those plants that gave us our first flower joy of the year.
Take care of yourself and stay well all!
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Andrew May is a freelance writer and ornamental horticulturist who dreams of having Clallam and Jefferson counties nationally recognized as “Flower Peninsula USA.” Send him questions c/o Peninsula Daily News, P.O. Box 1330, Port Angeles, WA 98362, or email news@peninsuladailynews.com (subject line: Andrew May).
