Friday, September 15, 2006

Flower Bulb Sources

flower bulbs
If you're like me - you're looking at your fall garden and mentally sorting out the tasks - and one of the biggies is finding and planting some great flower bulbs. In my case, I've signed up with a local group and I've purchased a "bag" of bright yellow daffodils for planting (several hundred in the bag) in large clumps beside the house. We're importing the bulbs as a group from Holland (well, actually through a distributor who imports directly from Holland)

There are usually three sources for great Dutch flower bulbs at this time of year.

The first is your local garden shop. The advantage of this is that you can see the bulb you're buying. You know it isn't nicked or small - you can check for fungus (put it down if any of these conditions exist) and walk away if the quality isn't good. The local guys usually try to have good stock.

You can buy from reputable bulb folks (like these folks Brent and Becky Heath) to get your bulbs online.

Or you can succumb to really cheap bulbs in magazine or online ads. This is a bad idea.

Really cheap discount flower bulbs are small. Hey, there's a reason they're cheap.

Sometimes they don't come until the ground is frozen. Kinda hard to plant 'em then.

Sometimes they don't come at all. That actually makes them rather expensive.

Sometimes (well rather often) when you have a problem with a discount bulb shipper (remember they don't grow 'em - they only buy and sell) they'll "replace" your bulbs if you're unhappy. Yes - they simply send you a few more out of the same barrel as the first unsatisfactory shipment.

Really cheap discount flower bulbs are never really cheap.

Because in this life - you always get what you pay for. One way or the other - you pay the price. Ooops - sounds like the title of a sermon.

I gotta go pay the lady for my big bag of bulbs. Remind me will you.

Oh yeah, the picture above is courtesy of the Netherlands Flower Bulb Information Center - good folks at www.bulb.com

But they don't answer questions like I do at my flower bulb site

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