Planting Bulbs

[BRL]

I've only ever done small areas of bulbs in the past. I have a customer that wants to install about 1200 of them in various beds in her yard in clusters. Can anybody give me a rough idea of what kind of production times 2 people can install them in? The beds will be completely prepped before hand & separately. I have myself & one other person & I have 2 drills with bits so we can both make holes. I was thinking 8 man hours, but would love to hear some other opinions. Thanks.

[Will Pacala]

I would sayaround that. It's not easy to do that many with so few men. Will you be adding fertilizer to the wholes? I've seen it done before and I thought that it would take up more time.

[Paul]

That should be plenty of time, if the ground is dry. Wet ground can slow you down but can be over come with a small load of dry pulverized dirt. 8 man hours should cover you to include drive time.

[Stonehenge]

Yup. :D

[agla]

You don't have to plant these as individuals with a drill. You can (and should IMO) plant bulbs in groups by digging a single hole at the proper depth, add bone meal and/or fert and bury it up. The benefits are more bulbs per hole. proper depth, fert is in the right place, you know which way the bulb is ultimately oriented, and they have a nice soft area to push up through in the spring. Nice groupings look better than individuals and I think it is harder to group by drilling single holes. Eight to twelve bulbs in a one minute hole with everything right vs. drilling that many more with uncertainty, I'll do the big holes.

One way, not the only way.

[dan deutekom]

If you use a bulb drill like I do then you can expect to plant about 500 bulbs an hour quite easily. One man drills the holes and the other drops in bulbs. When finished both men rake off the bed to fill the holes. I don't worry about the bulbs position in the hole because my experience has shown that they all bloom at the same time and height regardless of rightside up, upside down or on their side.:p

[Will Pacala]

I that one of your jobs or just a pic of the net? Another thing do you ammend the soil ar add fertilizer?

[dan deutekom]

That's a picture of beds I plant every year at the garden park that I am the gardener. What I do is pull the annuals, rake the bed clean, drill in the bulbs and then cover with a 3" layer of mushroom compost. I don't even work the soil in fall other than pulling out the annuals. When the bulbs are done in spring I dig them out and then rototill the compost into the bed for the annual planting.

[Will Pacala]

Well it sure looks ice. About how many bulbs are there in that garden??

[dan deutekom]

Those 2 beds have about 800 bulbs. I plant about 8000 bulbs each year throughout the grounds although they arn't all tulips.

[jwholden]

I'm with Agla on the method. I had a customer buy a lot, around 2000, daffodils for a woodland planting. I randomly dug holes and had my helper follow and put three, five, or seven bulbs in each hole. It came out VERY random/natural looking.

I didn't add any bonemeal or fertilizer and everything came up fine. IMO the best time to put some general purpose fertilizer down is right after the bulbs flower the following spring. They are chock full of energy when you get them, the grower never let them flower and they are rarin' to go.

The drill seems like an extra step, unless your doing a formal planting or working in densely planted beds.

In my parts we don't plant many Tulips, all you end up with is a bunch of fat squirrels!

[Will Pacala]

Same here, We do small beds of them but not too many bulbs. There are way too many squrrels around here. Also around 1,000 deere per square mile. The actually counted and did a test to find this. You can easily find 10 dead deere on the side of the highway in just a 5 mile stretch. Sorry but that is way too many.

[jwholden]

Will,

I had an eight pointer pass on in my yard on Friday after getting hit by a car. It was the second deer to get hit in a week. :(

I know there are too many of them but they are beautiful animals.

[Will Pacala]

Oh, I totaly agree that they are beutiful I would never want to harm them it's just that I think there are too many in some areas. I would hate to see one killed or even worse have someone else get injured or killed because of a deere. I think that they are one of the most beutiful woodland creatures.

[dan deutekom]

Tasty too:chef:

[Will Pacala]

Venison stew, one of my all time favorites. Out in the country (a short drive from) you can get anything. Just about every type of edible animal. I do enjoy living in the farmland/country like this, it's fun and tasty.

[Will Pacala]

This is waht you mean by the drill bits right? I have seen large amchines that plant them at farms too.

[BRL]

Yep, that's the bit. Thanks for the help everyone. Not sure if we're gonna get these in though. Got a Nor Easter coming in for the weekend, so we might have to shift over to snow work. Time will tell.

[Will Pacala]

Yeah sounds like a big storm for me up here. Should be fun!!

[Lawn Lad]

We use a bulb auger as pictured on a gas powered Echo drill. I used to plant bulbs by digging out the hole, adding bone meal, etc. It was a lot of labor, more than necessary I think. You can drill hundreds of holes in an hour. Two men as stated earlier can plant a boat load of bulbs by having one drill and one plunk the bulb in the hole. A boot works as a good "rake" to push the soil back in the hole. We use tulips like annuals. Once they're done blooming we yank 'em in the spring for the next color rotation. Why put all the time into digging holes and the such when they're only going to be in one year. Bulbs are cheap and the goal is to make the planting cost effective by keeping the labor to an absolute minimum. We will plant daffodils off in more naturalized areas, and we'll use the same technique for planting. We just keep adding a few more each year to account for those that don't make from year to year.

[Will Pacala]

I always liked the look of bulbs in landscape. The only thing I don't like is when there aren't enough in the landscape. I like the look of a whole pasture of them.