Bulb Season: Setting Up Your Garden for Colorful Spring Blooms

I use bulbs as kind of a generic term.

When in fact, what we typically refer to as bulbs is a group of plants called geophytes.

Geophytes are a perennial plant that survives some of the more unfavorable seasons, including cold, heat, drought, fire.

They die back to an underground storage organ, then regrow from that structure when the conditions are favorable again.

That storage organ holds energy and moisture and everything in the plant needs to re-sprout and bloom, which is why geophytes can push up flowers so quickly once the season turns.

Bulb is kind of the everyday word we use for this group, but Botanically, it only refers to one of the four distinct structures that fall under the geophyte umbrella.

And that would be a true bulb, which includes flowers like daffodils, tulips, and snowdrops.

They are a layered structure built from modified leaf tissue, kind of like an onion structure.

The second form is a corm, which is a solid mass of stem tissue with out layers, often a little bit flatter in shape.

And some examples including crocus, as well as native tritalia and brodiae.

Finally, the third one is a rhizome, which is a horizontal stem that grows at or just below soil surface and sends up shoots and And the most common example of a rhizome is bearded iris.

And then the fourth type is a tuber or a tuberous root.

And this is a swollen stem or root tissue that stores energy without the layered or chroma structure of the other types.

So some examples are the winter aconite, anemone, blanda, and dahlias.

So the difference between these is important because the structure of the geophyte helps determine how and when it can be divided, how it needs to be planted and how it spreads over time.

So by understanding the different types of geophytes helps you make better planting decision, depending on what your goals are.

Some things to keep in mind, not only is September and end October, depending on where you live, the time to start thinking about planting that spring color, Selection matters too.

So you want to pick large, firm bulbs now while nurseries have the best stock, even if you hang on to them to plant a month from now.

So we're going to talk about all these different types of geophytes, including native ones, some of the smaller overlooked ones, the different iris types, and all connect back to getting that spring color and planning ahead for it.