Caring for Fall Bulbs

Spring Care

When your bulbs have finished flowering, cut back the flower stalks to ground level. Then, and this is important, let the foliage of your flowering bulbs dieback naturally – do not cut it back while still green. The bulb needs this time to make food reserves for next year’s flowers.

Get more color by overplanting with annuals

Want your garden color to continue after the bulbs are finished? You can plant annuals directly over or around bulbs for your summer color. Just remember to leave the Fall bulbs in the ground – do not dig up and store as you would summer flowering varieties such as dahlias.

Critter alert

Squirrels, chipmunks, skunks and raccoons can dig and eat bulbs. If that isn’t bad enough, deer are known to eat the blooms in spring. To avoid heartbreak, apply animal repellant. Some people recommend adding several different types to discourage a variety of animals. You can dip the bulb directly in the repellant; apply in the hole or top-dress. Happy news – all these animals don’t like Daffodils.

Fertilizing Bulbs

Because bulbs are natural warehouses of food to use for blooming, fertilizer is unnecessary for the first year’s blooms. That said, you will need to add a quality fertilizer after the first blooms are done to help the bulb rebuild itself for the following year’s bloom. We recommend Bulb-tone, (from Espoma, the people that make Holly-tone) it’s an all-natural plant food with Bio-tone® microbes formulated to help repeat blooming bulbs.

• You can add the fertilizer now when you are planting the bulbs – the bulb will not take in the food until needed late next spring
• Or you can wait until after they bloom and top dress with fertilizer.