LADYBUG SAYS... OCTOBER IS BEST MONTH TO PLANT GARDEN OF SPRING FLOWERING BULBS

Spring flowering bulbs are one group of plants that guarantee perfect results the first year. That is because bulbs contain the equivalent of pre-packaged blooms. This is considered the best month for planting a spring flowering garden of bulbs. While it is possible to plant bulbs as late as Christmas, or before the ground is frozen, it is usually more pleasant to plant them before it turns cold.

When spring flowering bulbs are purchased they are plump objects in dormant conditions, dry, leafless and rootless, but they contain a completely formed flower bud ready to emerge in the spring and put on a show. All they require is to be planted properly, given moisture for root development and in the spring they begin to grow.

One of the mottos of the defunct Town and Country Garden Club was "If you think a bulb is an ugly thing, put it into the ground in the fall and apologize to it in the spring."

Daffodils and tulips are possibly the most favorite of the bulbs. With hyacinths and the many minor bulbs following in popularity.

This fall marks the 400th anniversary of the first planting of tulip bulbs in Holland. In 1593 a mere handful of bulbs were planted in the University of Leiden's Botantical Garden by a German professor, the first planted in the sandy Dutch soil. The bulb industry now produces more than 2 billion tulips each year.

These first tulips were possibly species tulips, less well known than their modern offspring, the sunny, magnificent hybrid tulips. Species tulips occur naturally around the world, in the Mediterranean region, China and Russia.

Possibly many red tulips, which spread by an underground stolons, or horizontal stems, are some of these original tulips. They were identified by the bulb product manager, Charles O. Cresson, at W. Altee Burpee Company of Warminster, PA, as Tulipa praecox, a wild species from the Mediterranean region.

These unusual tulips spread rampantly, but are hard to propagate because they do not like to be dug and replanted, and since they are an old, old specie tulip they do not produce seed. Friend Helen Meyer shared them several years ago.

Each spring, the famous Keukenhof Garden in Lisse, The Netherlands, features more than six million tulips, daffodils and crocus, and just about every hardy bulb known, on 70 acres of expertly designed park land.

Those readers who have been here for a long time know that my very favorite bulbs are daffodils or narcissus (names are interchangeable).

Because they are so many different varieties (more than 3,000) color, heights and blooming dates that one can have them over a six week period.

Although gardeners often plant tulips, daffodils and hyacinths, many do not explore the large field of the minor bulbs or the small ones that are large important for abundant color and ease of care.

The first to bloom is aptly named Galanthus or the common snowdrop, blooming often through the snow. Masses of the white drooping flowers with green tips, can be grown anyplace and will spread elsewhere. They often grew wild in our peach orchards when cultivation there was not as great as it is today.

Winter Eranthis have masses of buttercup-like yellow flowers that often appear above the freshly fallen snow.

A little later the popular crocus show off their mixed colors. Colors for specie and hybrid crocus run through shades of lavender to deep purple, as well as yellow and white. Many are attractively striped. Crocus may be planted in the lawn because the foliage will be gone by mowing time.

In Asia, a little over a century ago, a Swiss botanist discovered chinodoxia blooming at the edge of the mountain snow. Today three varieties of these delightful blue flowers are available and will bloom shortly after the crocus.

Puschkinia is a relative to Siberian squill or scilla. It has bluish white blossoms with blue stripes. The leaves grow about four inches tall and soon die down before summer. Scilla comes in pink and white as well as blue. They can grow up to 12 inches in height and bear spiky clusters of little bells. Neither of these bulbs ever need dividing.

Daisy-like Grecian windflowers (Anemone blanda) are a delight in shades of blue and pink and as they grow low on the ground and bloom for a long time in the springtime.

Muscari or grape hyacinths have tiny sweetly scented blooms appearing on spikes. The grasslike leaves appear in the fall and lie on the surface of the soil, uninjured by winter's cold.

Spring blooming bulbs are, indeed, one of the best investments that can be made in the garden.