planting tulips

Four large boxes arrived yesterday afternoon while I was out, which contained the pots from Whichford, so I spent a happy day unpacking them, and planting the tulip bulbs that have been sitting down in the garage for weeks.  I was relieved to see the pots arrive, given that I did want to get on with planting the tulips, and the pottery hadn't given me an ETA.  The Systems Administrator who was at home when they arrived said that they came by a commercial parcel company, not Whichford's own transport.

Terracotta flowerpots can't be the easiest things to send, though I assume the carrier they use knows not to drop the boxes if they want to keep the Whichford account.  The pots were stacked inside each other, padded with wood shavings, and bubble wrap secured snugly around the rims with parcel tape, tied into rigid bundles with plastic string, and surrounded by tightly packed straw.  None of them were broken.  In the spirit of reduce, recycle, reuse, the straw and wood shavings went into the chicken run as litter to soak up their droppings, and keep their feet dry if it ever rains.  The bubble wrap went in the plastics recycling bin and I'll take the boxes into work to use for our own mail order, so the only thing that went straight into the rubbish was the plastic string.  There was a tiny bit of newspaper involved too, which I'll use to line the vegetable peelings bin the next time I empty it, and I was amused to see that was from The Times.  I wouldn't expect the Daily Mirror, not from Whichford.  The boxes are currently dumped in the lower sitting room, where they are affording great amusement to the cats.  Let's hope none of our plant mail order customers have severe cat allergies.

I bought six pots decorated with basket weave for the tall tulips, which was fewer than I'll need but as many as I could afford at the time, and some shallow pans for the houseleeks that live on the low wall around the terrace (or patio.  Terrace sounds pretentious and patio sounds suburban so I'm not sure which it is).  Several of the current garden centre houseleek pots are disintegrating after last winter, and I would like to upgrade them all in time.  Some of last year's tulip pots haven't crumbled too badly yet, and will do for another year.  I got some reduced-to-clear peat free compost in B&Q, which I wouldn't risk for long term pot plantings of shrubs, but should do for bulbs that will be all finished come next May.  Or at least I hope it will.  The last bag I had wasn't bad, and the things I planted in it are alive and sprouting.

The peat issue is a tricky one.  While the Irish burn the stuff in power stations I feel that not using it in the garden must be a futile gesture, then I read about the beauties of peat bog vegetation, and the value of peat bogs in locking up carbon, and feel I shouldn't ethically use it, except maybe for seed compost where the volume really will be tiny, and the cost of failure (all those packets of seed and all that time spent sowing them) severe.  Just because other people do bad things isn't always an excuse to do them too.  If the tulips fail I will reconsider my high moral position.

I've gone for orange, red and purple again for the tulips, plus a few T. kaufmanniana that I've put in little clay pots for next spring, then will plant out into the border.  I considered going for soft pinks and creams as a change, but I like the strong colours. and they look well with the lime green flowers of Euphobia x characias which seeds itself around the Italian garden where the tulip pots stand.  T. kaufmanniana has cream coloured petals with a yellow base, and those bulbs will end up in the island bed in the back garden where I already have a couple of T. kaufmanniana varieties, I think 'Ancilla' which is pale lemon with a scarlet throat, and 'Heart's Delight' which is red and white.  Unlike the tall Darwin and Triumph hybrids, which mostly dwindle quickly in the ground, several of the small species tulips naturalise reasonably well, and I've had these two for years.