This has no doubt been asked five millions times. So, . . .
What is a good place, online preferably, to find bulbs. Particularly
interested in daffodils (sp?) but want to see as much as I can.
TIA.
Vic

It is a little late but I think that Van Engelen still has some
available. Randy

Vrstull wrote:

This has no doubt been asked five millions times. So, . . .
What is a good place, online preferably, to find bulbs. Particularly
interested in daffodils (sp?) but want to see as much as I can.
TIA.
Vic


--

"Tom Engel" wrote in message
...
It is a little late but I think that Van Engelen still has some
available. Randy

Vrstull wrote:

This has no doubt been asked five millions times. So, . . .
What is a good place, online preferably, to find bulbs. Particularly
interested in daffodils (sp?) but want to see as much as I can.
TIA.
Vic


--


"Late" is relative. I routinely wait until November-December to plant bulbs
in Eastern Tennessee which allows be to buy whatever is left on the shelves
at 50-75% off of October prices. Sure I come up with some strange stuff but
if I'm just looking for something to naturalize it doesn't matter too much.
Just got done planting crocuses and daffodils yesterday and mulching the
beds this morning...

On the other hand, when I lived in Alaska I had problems with waiting until
October because sometimes I would wind up with snowcover before mailordered
bulbs were even shipped.
--
John McGaw
[Knoxville, TN, USA]

Return address will not work. Please
reply in group or through my website:
http://johnmcgaw.com

John McGaw wrote:

"Late" is relative. I routinely wait until November-December to plant bulbs
in Eastern Tennessee which allows be to buy whatever is left on the shelves
at 50-75% off of October prices. Sure I come up with some strange stuff but
if I'm just looking for something to naturalize it doesn't matter too much.
Just got done planting crocuses and daffodils yesterday and mulching the
beds this morning...



I, too, like to wait until the spring bulbs are on closeout.
I usually get my "regular" bulbs from Van Engelen (or John
Scheepers) but then I shop for bargains locally. Last week
I found a place that was selling crocus, a pack of 75, for
$3.60. They only had 7 packs left so I bought them all. I
also picked up some really nice parrot tulips. So far this
year I have planted about 900 bulbs and still have all the
crocus left to plant. I should get them all planted this
weekend unless I buy some more bulbs.
--
Bill R.

Remove No-Junk-Mail- in e-mail address to reply by e-mail

I think bulbmeister.com is still having a sale--I bought some narcissus and
they look good. I'm not sure if the daffs are on sale but they probably have
them. They have a wide range of bulbs, tubers, rhizomes, etc.
zemedelec

In article , "John McGaw"
wrote:

"Tom Engel" wrote in message
...
It is a little late but I think that Van Engelen still has some
available. Randy

Vrstull wrote:

This has no doubt been asked five millions times. So, . . .
What is a good place, online preferably, to find bulbs. Particularly
interested in daffodils (sp?) but want to see as much as I can.
TIA.
Vic


--


"Late" is relative. I routinely wait until November-December to plant bulbs
in Eastern Tennessee which allows be to buy whatever is left on the shelves
at 50-75% off of October prices. Sure I come up with some strange stuff but
if I'm just looking for something to naturalize it doesn't matter too much.
Just got done planting crocuses and daffodils yesterday and mulching the
beds this morning...

On the other hand, when I lived in Alaska I had problems with waiting until
October because sometimes I would wind up with snowcover before mailordered
bulbs were even shipped.

I would prefer to set things out only in September & October because I
feel like I'm getting them the proper head-start & all -- but I keep
getting sales offers. Last week Bulbmeister sent me their final list of
remaining stocks most of which is either too common or I already had it,
but a few things were previously extremely expensive & much reduced. So I
got a lot of extra Fritillaria pudica -- I'd wanted to increase the tiny
johnny-jump-up patch earlier, but the eency bulbs were just too costly & i
couldn't get EVERYthing. But now getting them for 75% discount, I
couldn't resist. I spent about $55 for something like $145 worth of bulbs
all told, none of it the sort of thing one gets from the local garden
shop's bulb bins (though I did also find some things in local bins
including a yellow grape hyacinth that I had never previously seen, &
there it was in one of those "mass production" bags, three bulbs for the
price of twenty of anything else). I'll get this final batch of
bulbmeister sale-bulbs in the ground in a jiffy & I've no doubt they'll
all be fine. In our mild climate November is in fact well within reason
for planting bulbs. The main reason NOT to entirely wait for the sales is
because so much of the most appealing stuff will be long, long gone. But
if all one wanted was big standard yellow daffodils & the usual triumph
tulips, might as well wait until they're marked down.

Three different bulb sources sent me e-mails of "close outs" but none so
late or so cheap as the final bulbmeister list. Since before autumn I have
been trying not to spend too much on bulbs this year -- but even
restraining myself mightily I spent what must've added up to about $800 or
more, most of it for full price ordered in advance of the season so that
I wouldn't miss out of any choice. And spending that amount doesn't
require losing ones self control, because it really does add up fast, & to
limit a single given order to "only" $250 for just one order means passing
on the greater majority of what one wanted, & ordering only ten each
rather than 25 each of most things (& now & then, for something truly
oddball & pricy, getting a measily one to three bulbs insufficient to
create a drift). After making a list, one goes through it crossing off
what one can even slightly bare not to have, lowers the numbers ordered
from fifty to twenty from twenty to ten -- & even then it's a couple
hundred dollars just from that one source & still two other specialists to
check out.

But whooboy is spring gonna be thrilling. Actually, even autumn's been
thrilling, as I added quite a lot of extra autumn crocuses (including some
sprouted ones on sale a month ago) which have bloomed extravagantly almost
immediately, & some things are autumn-grass-producing so they're already
growing right now (the hoop petticoat daffodils are thick grass right now,
as also a couple of onion-related flowers that produce grass starting in
autumn & winter, & the "peruvian" scilla not from Peru has produced a
patch of fat succulent blades). Nor is there any shortage of blooms; I
didn't plant but two new cyclamens this season, due to being too broke to
get more of the rarer forms which are all I "need" by now. But all the
ones previously installed are such glories for autumn or winter flowers.
But obviously its spring that's going to be the doozy of a time for drifts
of flashy blooms all over the gardens.

One "good" thing about getting older is time flies by in a trice, so it
won't feel like I'm waiting forever to see the spring flowers. It'll just
be a couple eye-blinks closer to death for me, & spring will be here &
crowded with species tulips, miniature & species daffodils, fritillaries,
bazillions of snow crocuses, dwarf irises, sundry smaller species of
flowering onions & a couple big ones, about ten kinds of muscaris,
snowdrops, snowflakes, camas, glory-of-the-snow, &c &c -- even some
temperate terrestrial orchids.

There was an autumn picnic & sale at one of the local nurseries that I
went to last week, & all remaining perennials were 70% off. I didn't get
much, as I didn't really want the remnant prerennials (& their "sale" of
moldy bulbs for 25% off looked laughable compared to the sales lists sent
me by the specialists). But they'd also moved a few woody shrubs to the
70% off perennial house, apparently for no better reason than it is hard
to sell deciduous things that have gone dormant & have only a few scruffy
leaves left on them. So I got a "Crater's Edge" azalea, a blue rose of
sharon, a "Centennial" azalea, a very few other three-gallon shrubs that
were on average $28-$30 each before marked down, but now cost no more than
small pots of ordinary things. I think they made a boo-boo selling the
"Crater's Edge" for the price of a daisy, because it's actually a species
rhody of considerable merit & will be in full flower probably about March
(conceivably in February, it's one of the earliest of all bloomers, before
leaves come back), & it's not like they'd have to store it in the back
corner as long as it'll take the blue rose of sharon to look really
marketable again. That blue rose of sharon I'd wanted for a long time, but
it's probably the most common temperate-hardy offering in the genus, & I
couldn't see paying $30 for something that common even though just awfully
pleasant; but for 70% off wadda-deal for something I had already wanted
for the roadside low-maintenance garden.

I didn't attend as many autumn sales this year as I did in the previous
couple of years because I am broker this year & I had spent more than I
could afford just on bulbs, but if one really knows what the plants are,
autumn's a good time to go flower shopping. The choices are fewer of
course, but not everything left over will be low-end choices. Just because
something has lost its "pot presentation appeal" it gets marked down, as
most people make snap-purchases based on it being flowering at the moment
of purchase, & sometimes the most interesting plants are the ones that do
not show themselves to best advantage for very long in nursery pots. Some
of the best of all shade garden plants only have a brief highly marketable
pot presentation, & if not sold immediately will languish unsold the rest
of the year. So last autumn I got a whole tray of jack-in-the-pulpits,
plus trilliums & pink dogtooth lilies, all for ultra-cheap because none of
their other customers are willing to buy pots of dirt with nothing
obviously growing in them.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/