LADYBUG SAYS...FLOWERING BULBS HAVE ENJOYED A DAMP SPRING

Bedding plants are showing up all over town. They are at the greenhouses, local stores, garden centers, supermarkets, and hardware stores. How great the fresh, new displays look after a winter of gray days and dreary vegetation.

Then came our late spring, and never has one been more beautiful or colorful. Have you ever seen the blooming magnolias the Soulangiana, Strellata, and nigra the flowering plums, pears and cherries, especially the weeping cherries, red bud and forsythia, fuller and more colorful?

Spring flowering bulbs have loved this Seattle type weather cool, with abundant moisture. In the 45 years of growing these favorite flowers, we have never seen them so rewarding. They bloomed a bit later, but have been with us for seven weeks and some are still in bloom. Clumps that haven't borne flowers for years, have shot up their pretty, rewarding faces, many blooming through six to eight inches of fallen leaves. One bloom stalk measured 23 inches. What a year for spring flowers!

Back to today's subject of bedding plants. If you wonder why they are so called, it is because they go into your garden beds. Although some people think of them as "plants," it is not the terminology that counts. What really counts is that these started plants give a handsome beginning to the garden, both in design and success, and push gardening off to a good start on the season.

Many gardeners are drawn as irresistibly to the rows of neat, green flats topped with blooms of bright colors, as a dieter is drawn to an ice cream sundae.

Generally, bedding plants are grown in small "packs" divided into three, four or six sections, each containing one or more growing plants. (If you read a garden center ad for a sale on "6-packs," think plants, not beer.) Larger plastic flats hold 12 to 24 packs. Packs are often individually priced a little higher than a whole flat, so one may need a pocket calculator to help figure prices and number of plants quickly.

Shoppers' first impulse is to buy the packs or flats that have the most blooms on them. Retailers know this and encourage their suppliers to give them "lots of color" on their bedding plants.

Bedding plants in bloom are the best sellers, but controlled tests at major universities throughout the country have shown that actively growing bedding plants in the juvenile stage perform the best when transplanted in the garden.

The energy a plant spends on producing blooms takes away some of the energy it could be spending on establishing itself in the garden. The best bet is to select stocky, well branched plants that have not reached the blooming stage. Plants must have a good root system to grow out quickly into the surrounding soil.

When ready to plant, gently "pop" the plants out of their packs by pressing on the bottom of the pack. An easy method is to place one hand over the top of the pack, stem between fingers, turn the pack upside down, and with your other hand press on the bottom to release the plant. Handle with care.

Arrange your plants on the top of the garden bed until they are where they will be evenly spaced. Then dig the hole with a hand trowel. Be sure to make the soil loose in the bottom, place the plant in the hole and fill in around it firmly with garden soil. If there are any open buds or blooms on your plants, ruthlessly pinch them off. The plants will recover faster from transplanting this way. It used to be said that plants received the same shock in transplanting as the human body does from major surgery. Both have to have time to recover.

For those getting a late start at planting, or those who kept waiting for the weather to get better, or just can't wait for plants to get large, there is still hope for planting an enviable garden.

Bedding plant retailers often offer large size plants for "instant" show in beds and containers. Plants are also planted in 4-inch, 6-inch, 8-inch and even 10-inch pots. Beware that the size given is referring to the diameter of the container the plant is growing in, not the size of the plant itself.

Buying plants in peat pots requires a good understanding of the peat pot characteristics. In theory, the roots remain undisturbed at planting time and will penetrate the peat pot and spread into the soil. Actually, the peat acts like a quick drying blotter if the upper edges of the peat pot are left exposed.

One should carefully remove the top part of the peat pot before planting the remainder below the surface. The pot should be wet at the time of planting and not allowed to dry during the critical period when roots are going through the walls of the pot.

Proper selection and proper planting of bedding plants are two big steps toward a successful gardening season.