If the rodents don’t use them for winter sustenance, I should have an explosion of blooms next spring. I recently planted over 220 tulip bulbs, a dozen daffodils and a handful of Asiatic and Oriental lilies.
I tried to stick with long-lived tulip types like Darwin, Fosteriana and Greigii. And I’ve always wanted to try the peony-shaped Double Early tulips, so I planted cultivars in pink, white and yellow.
I tucked quite a few species tulips like ‘Eastern Star’ (pictured below) into the front of my flowerbeds. The rodents aren’t interested in them, and they bloom so early in the spring that you can easily interplant them with annuals or perennials. I’ve been growing the same three cultivars for several years now and decided to experiment with three more.
And because winter can be unbearably long for Wisconsin gardeners, I purchased several Triumph tulips, potted them up and stuck them in my refrigerator crisper drawer. I’ll pull them out in in January for a nice pick-me-up in the midst of the winter doldrums.