SOME winter and spring-flowering bulbs are so versatile and tough we can just about do anything with them. Fortunately, the tough ones include some of the most beautiful and popular of all ornamentals.
In the narcissus tribe are the great daffodils and jonquils for example.
These days blooms of various shapes come in astonishing and unusual colour combinations, ranging from the familiar and always-welcome butter-yellows, to clear, dazzling pinks, bi-colours and even glistening white.
February is a great time to start selecting bulbs at nurseries or through bulb catalogues, which these days read like exciting novels.
It pays to get in early because the best ones are usually snapped up fast. We can start planting narcissus bulbs immediately.
These are the tough ones because once planted, they may be left in the ground and virtually forgotten except when in bloom. Better still, the bulbs constantly increase in number year after year, always producing bigger and better displays.
Only when daffodil and jonquil clumps become massively over-crowded does the quality and number of blooms begin to suffer.
When lifted, some old clumps produce huge numbers of mature and immature bulbs. And after re-planting, well-spaced into new ground, it is back to even more spectacular displays within a couple of seasons.
Once daffodils and jonquils have flowered, there is a crucial but untidy period when only the leaves are left, often flopping around and looking messy. Yet these leaves should never be cut back because they continue to supply energy to bulbs down below. They not only continue to increase in size and number, but in the heart of each bulb, embryo flowers are also forming.
This is another reason why daffodil and jonquil bulbs need not be lifted every year during dormancy. Although entering a typical period of "dry rest", it is not necessary that soils remain perfectly dry.
These bulbs survive and remain healthy, even in garden beds that occasionally become wet due to summer rains or normal watering.
This tolerance of some moisture during summer rest occurs with many other bulbs, corms or rhizomes, such as those of crocuses, snowdrops, winter irises, ornamental oxalis and Dutch irises.
Tulip and hyacinth bulbs are different and need special treatment. They should be lifted every year when dormant - even those growing in containers. The bulbs must then be allowed to completely dry off, preferably out of the ground and stored in airy conditions, out of the sun.
Tulip bulbs even appreciate being stored in a warm shed during summer, but always out of direct sunlight. If the bulbs remain in the soil or even in slightly moist conditions they rot. This is the main reason why tulip and hyacinth bulbs fail to come up during the following winter.
It is during this dry period that these bulbs begin to form embryo flowers. However, they need even more special treatment, particularly in districts with mild to warm winter temperatures. After being stored dry during summer, they benefit from an autumn chilling, even while still dry.
Every April, I place the dry tulip and hyacinth bulbs into paper bags. These are then stored in the lower part of our refrigerator.
They remain there until the soil out in the garden has become cold - usually by early June. By this time, the bases of the chilled bulbs are swollen with the pressure from roots impatient to get out.
Within hours of being planted in moist, cold soil, the roots have already burst out and new growth commenced. However, the real benefits of this artificial chilling show up as extra-long flower stems and magnificent, long-lasting blooms.
