Dear Helen: Can you recommend small-growing spring flower bulbs beyond the usual crocuses and grape hyacinths? I鈥檇 like to venture outside the familiar in my bulb purchases this fall.
B.L.
There are many. My first suggestion is to walk through the bulb displays at your local garden centres, to seek among the smaller kinds of flowers ones that appeal. Packages will note the bulbs鈥� bloom time (early, mid, or late spring) and current introductions will be identified with 鈥淣EW.鈥�
Little spring bulb flowers add charm and bring delightful surprises to containers and garden beds. They are easy to tuck into the soil along plot edges and in small corners. I often insert them into fall and winter planters in between the pansies and violas, heathers, dwarf evergreens and heucheras (coral bells).
Here are three of my personal favourites. I would very much like to see more gardeners growing and enjoying them.
Pink Giant is a Glory of the Snow (Chionodoxa) that grows up to 15 cm high. Each bulb produces a full bouquet of waxy little pink flowers that make lovely cut flower displays for the house. My plants bloom in March.
Dwarf irises are exquisite little flowers, ideal for conspicuous bed corners and edges, and for containers. Traditional varieties are blue and gold, but J.S. Dyt is a dark reddish purple and Katherine鈥檚 Gold is creamy yellow. Katherine Hodgkin is a beauty in white and delicate blue, brushed distinctly with darker blue veining. New this year is the white and gold Natascha. Dwarf irises grow to around 15 cm high and bloom in February.
Species, or botanical, tulips will flower for many years in a garden, given a warm, summer-dry location. Most garden centres have at least a few of these little gems, which have been selected and have evolved from the original tulips in the hills of Central Asia. Probably the most familiar is Tulipa tarda, just 10 cm high, with slender, glossy leaves and perky blooms in rich butter yellow, the petals tipped in creamy white. Each bulb produces around six flowers.
Little Beauty flowers have pinkish-red petals and a dark, charcoal-blue heart. It grows to the same height as Tarda. Among the varieties of botanical tulip commonly available, plant heights range from 10 to 25 cm high. Their bloom time is March and April.
As with many spring flower bulbs I plant, I grow them first in containers, to enjoy as spring displays on the patio. After they bloom, I transplant carefully to garden sites to die down, go dormant, and re-rot in the fall in preparation for late winter and spring re-flowering.
Dear Helen: In a recent column you described three new (to you) seed-grown plants that you consider valuable 鈥渄iscoveries鈥� this year. I wrote down the names, but foolishly did not include the seed sources. The plants were mouse melon, Ruby Crush tomato and a Mexican marigold called Dropshot.
G.C.
I am still snacking on all three, with considerable relish, in the garden. Mouse melon, or cucamelon, is available from several sources. Mine was Salt Spring Seeds.
Ruby Crush is a compact grape tomato from T&T Seeds. The plant I grew in a tomato cage in a warm, sunny, open area of the garden produced especially sweet and delicious little tomatoes that did not crack when it rained.
Dropshot was from William Dam Seeds. I have a container planting, and more growing at a vegetable plot edge. I nip off stem tips to chew on and enjoy for their rich licorice flavour. I鈥檓 planning to grow more in pots, along with the usual basil and cilantro, at a bright window through the late fall and winter.
Dear Helen: Do thistles have underground running roots like horsetail? My persistent pulling and cutting has not resulted in controlling them. I don鈥檛 want to use herbicides.
G.T.
Canada thistle is a perennial. It spreads on creeping roots that store energy for continuing re-growth. Seeds can lie dormant in the soil for up to 20 years. There is no quick solution, but keeping the plants cut down and never allowing them to set seed will eventually starve the roots and prevent new plants from sprouting.
The fall, as the plants send sugars from top growth down into the root system, is an especially effective time to cut the stems down to the ground to prevent the roots from becoming re-energized.
