Best BULBS on a BUDGET — Ep. 122

Hey guys, so I thought I would take a break from gardening right now and do a quick video on buying bulbs on a budget. So as you know, what is it, last year now? We ended up planting about 70,000 bulbs, a little over 70,000 bulbs in our lawn area. So it's bulbs under less than about a quarter acre of lawn. And we planted bulbs all around, like in little garden beds and here and there. Back in the forest, we planted some of our native bulbs. And I'm like totally smitten. I love the idea of bulbs now. It wasn't something that I had, you know, really thought about, but now that we're on our own land and we saw the beauty of the bulbs and the pollination aspects that they bring for a lot of generalist pollinators, we were like sold on it. I started to look at different bulb catalogs and you get a lot of them after you order some bulbs. And I figured out that there's like different ways that you could be a bit more budget conscious. So for those of you who actually want to plant bulbs this year, or maybe plan on planting them for next year, I thought I'd share some of this wisdom with you. And I'm sure some of the viewers here will also have some wisdom as well. So as I mentioned, fall is approaching and I will be planting a number of bulbs here that will start to bloom in spring. And that's usually typical. If you have bulbs that are going to be blooming in fall, then you typically plant them in springtime. So it's, it's, it feels a little like backwards and you can see my head's kind of spinning too when you actually like plant the bulbs and when they, they bloom. But typically if you want to save on bulk buying with bulbs, then I would suggest actually buying them seasons in advance. So for instance, I bought my fall bulbs already, but that was back in spring of this year. So typically when the companies start to sell their, their bulbs, they'll make an announcement in early spring. And by that time I have my bulb list really ready. And when you do a pre-order, typically they are cheaper than if you're buying them in fall. So if you decide now it's like late summer, kind of early fall, and you're like, oh, I definitely want to plant bulbs this year in the fall, then you're probably going to be paying a premium. Now you may get like some discounts, like maybe you had a labor day sale or something along those lines and you could get some discounts on bulbs. But I generally find that the ones that you could pre-order seasons in advance is usually the way to go. And of course you could also get discount bulbs. And I've definitely done that. Like the Lyatris is a great example. Oftentimes I'll see end of year Lyatris, but oftentimes you, you will just get like the bottom of the bulb barrel and you may not get the ones that you really wanted. Because I've also found out that if you wait on buying bulbs, oftentimes they just sell out for the season and you may have to go to a different bulb company, or you may just not be able to get them at all. So staying on top of it and planning it seasons in advance, maybe a lot to ask, but I think that you'll actually end up saving money in the process. So if you want to actually plant bulbs this year and you're like, Oh, drats, I like miss the spring season. Then maybe you could actually plan for next year. The second thing that I would recommend is that there are some places that sell bulbs at retail and there's others that sell at wholesale and retail. And oftentimes I will buy bulbs first and foremost from those wholesale bulb catalogs. Now you don't need to have a wholesale account. You don't need to have a company account in order to be able to do that. I found, and it just goes to show you that these are usually the companies that sell the bulbs to retailers. So of course, if you have bulbs that are being sold at retail, you're probably paying a slight premium because that retailer needs to make money as well. But if you go to the source, if you go to the people and the places that actually grow the bulbs, then you usually could get them at a more affordable price. The other thing I will say is that buying bulbs in bulk often helps. So you get a discount when you buy more and you may often think, well, you know, I only have like, you know, 80 bucks or 50 bucks or 30 bucks or a hundred bucks to spend on bulb buying. You know, maybe you won't be able to get those big Allium Globemasters, you know, those ones with like big spherical heads that are, you know, purple and very striking that you see at all the botanic gardens. But you might be able to get like small species style tulips or crocuses or Muscaris or something along those lines. And that's what I'm going to do today. I have this John Sheepers fall bulb catalog, and actually this was a place that I was not aware of. But then when you buy bulbs, you often get on a list, right? And then you get all these unsolicited catalogs and some of those catalogs actually hook you and you end up buying bulbs. And I was looking through this catalog and it is so bright and beautiful. I'll take some close up shots of it. So it's very enticing. But I just made these marks because I was surprised that some of these bulbs are actually pretty decent prices for lots of bulbs. And you know, typically in the Netherlands, where a lot of these bulbs are grown and they don't originate from the Netherlands, but they are grown in the Netherlands, they'll kind of plant in these stripes or strips or swaths of color. And I don't know. I mean, to each his own. I don't really love the look of that. But what we did this past year with the Stinson style lawn, where we just kind of like toss the bulbs in and it looked much more natural as they were coming up. That's kind of more of what I dig. So I and I also don't really personally care for. And of course, my taste preferences may change, but I don't care for those really frilly flowers, the ones that may have double flowers or they look like some of those tulips that look like creamsicles and things like that. I think they're interesting to look at, but I don't find double flowers to be very helpful for pollinators. I think they might be a little bit too frilly. And I tend to like flowers that are a little bit more understated. And the good news about that is if you don't mind more understated flowers, especially the species flowers, because oftentimes the cultivated varieties have been cultivated for more flouncy or garish or bright blooms. But I have a tendency to go towards the ones that are like the species. And those actually tend to be a little less expensive, surprisingly. Not all of them, but some of them. So I was looking at this one, Tulipa Clusiana Cynthia. So it's a cultivar of Tulipa Clusiana. And you could get 200 bulbs for $48.50 right now in this magazine. Now, these prices, of course, I'm reading them right now. And those prices may very well change because, as you know, at this current moment, Europe is going through an energy crisis. And I think that probably growing bulbs, anybody who works in the greenhouse or the food industry or any kind of anybody who's working in the manufacturing industry that requires more energy and more inputs are probably getting crushed right now. So I don't know how this is going to fare next year and if prices will actually raise, but they'll probably raise proportionately to all the other plants in the magazine. So I'm just kind of reading it as right now. So if you wanted to say, oh, I want to get a bunch of bulbs for less than $50, then you may want to take a look at some of these cultivated species tulips. So here's another one, Tulipa abatilinii Bright Gem, and that's $200 for $41.75. That's the same for Tulip Bakerii Lilac Wonder, which is actually one of the ones that I had gotten last year. I didn't get 200 of them. But if that was like the only thing that I was going to get and I didn't want to spend more than $50, I mean, you probably have to pay some taxes and maybe you have to pay shipping and handling, but that would be a really good one. And then here's another one, Tulipa clusiana Variation Chrysantha, $200 for $30.75. So that's really not bad. I mean, if you had a small swath of lawn or even just a small bed and you just wanted to dot those in there and have a nice like carpet of these species tulips, then I think that would actually look really great. And many of the species tulips, and what I like about the species tulips is that they're usually less than 12 inches tall. So they're quite small. They don't have those like long lollipop stick heads. And I tend to like the ones that are a little bit more low to the ground. So if you have like a little small rock garden, things along those lines, then that could probably be good. Here's some other ones. Tulipa dazistamon, $200 for $35.25. And Tulipa humilis, $200 for $48.50. So that's a little bit more expensive. The Tulipa humilis tend to be a bit more expensive. And I don't know if that's just because it's harder to cultivate them or there's just less of them or what that supply demand might actually look like. And then here's another one, Tulipa linifolia. I believe I'm actually getting this one this year, $200 for $37.50. So this keeps on going on and on. Here's another one, Tulipa saxotillis, $200 for $32.75. We had a number of Narcissus, or I usually knew them growing up as daffodils, but I don't have a penchant for them. I don't particularly. I think they're nice, but they're not ones that I would necessarily gravitate towards. So I kind of look through this magazine and I'm like, well, which is the one that might be the least expensive in a bulk buy? And I found one called twinkling yellow. So this is obviously a cultivar called twinkling yellow. It looks like a standard daffodil that's just yellow with a slightly deeper yellow center. And there's a hundred for $38.75. Of course, you could, if you don't want that many, you could go with 50 for $27.75 or you could go for 10 for $7.50. So, you know, this is like how I would think about buying bulbs. If you wanted to, again, to plant them in bulk and have more of a show because oftentimes the flowers do look more impressive when you're actually planting them in groups. Now, does that mean that you have to actually like plant them in a whole swath or stripes on your lawn? You know, probably not. But if you want to do that too, that's totally fine. So crocuses, this is one that I loved seeing come up in our lawn. We had a very kind of erratic winter where we had snow, no snow, rain, snow, no rain, snow, snow up until like May. So the crocuses were kind of getting hit pretty hard. So they didn't last as long as probably crocuses would, but there's plenty of crocuses that you could get for, uh, for, you know, pretty, a good budget. So if, look, if you had no more than 30 bucks, crocus tamacianus, which is the species crocus, but the cultivar bars purple happens to be $29.75 for 200 of them. I mean, that's not bad. And by the way, I actually went to the herbarium, the Liberty Hyde Bailey conservatory and herbarium at Cornell university. And I was taking a look at some of those old magazines that you could see bulbs and flowers and all that other sorts of things. Like what people were getting back in the Victorian days. And the prices are like 5 cents, like nothing. It was like nothing. So of course, with like inflation and everything, um, you know, you don't know what that, that would cost at this stage, but here's another one. Crocus tamacianus ruby giant 200 for $32 and 75 cents. I mean, honestly, not that bad. Okay. Carrying on. Oh, the anemones. Anemones are another great one that we actually planted in our Stinson style lawn. They don't get too high. They get about four inches. And these, I saw that you could get 500 for $78 and 75 cents. And that's the anemone blonda blue shades. So that's the anemone that looks like a little blue, but it has like little edges of white as well. And you could get some white ones in there as well. So that's 500 for under 80 bucks, which is not bad. This one I wasn't really familiar with. And I haven't had any experience with growing these at all. And these are 500 for $68 and 50 cents. That's not bad. These are called the glory of the snow, and you could get 500 for under a hundred bucks. You could get a thousand for $164 and 25 cents as well. If you wanted to go a little bigger. And then fritillarias, which I absolutely adore. I think these were some of my favorite bulbs that were coming up. The fritillaria meleagris. They're called the guinea hen flower or the checkered lily. They come in like this mauve-y purplish red color. And also you get some whites, creamy whites in there as well. And it says you could get 200 for $53 and 75 cents, which is not bad. And then alliums. So I'm definitely getting some alliums this year. And you could get some native alliums as well, which I've gotten some native alliums for some of our garden beds here. But some of the alliums are like the most striking. And I was trying to find alliums that could actually bloom from like spring up through fall. There's a point, I can't remember what month in there, where it's very hard to actually find some alliums blooming. But I think we were able to do it and find some more. But there's quite a few that you could get that are pretty much within like the $50 to $70 range. So allium molly janine, $500 for $59 and 25 cents. The neopolitanum is $500 for $46 and 75 cents. And then the spherocephalon is $500 for $65 and 75 cents. So that's not bad. I mean, those are some of my good picks. And again, maybe they're not the ones that you exactly wanted. But again, if you are on a budget and you're really looking how you could get more bulbs, more bang for your buck, essentially, then you could take a look at these. It's not a small list. I mean, obviously, if you go through this whole magazine, there's tons and tons of bulbs. And in my opinion, some of the cultivars kind of look very similar to one another. So if you look through the ones and say, okay, well, I have this budget, then here's what I could do. And then I would just keep a lookout for sales. I mean, we just had Labor Day that passed. You might be able to get a nice pre-order for spring. So if you're ordering for spring bulbs, then you could actually place that order in the fall by using some of these same methods. But yeah, and I'm obviously not touching upon where to plant the bulbs and how high they are and other considerations like making sure the bulbs are not invasive in your area. I mean, those are all important things to consider. So as you're looking through these things, make sure that these bulbs make sense for you, that they make sense for the zone that you're in, or they make sense for the fact that they're not like an invasive plant, that if they naturalize, they're not going to displace other plants that are native. Like those are things that you should definitely be thinking about and not just be thinking about like, can I afford these bulbs? The price is right, but this bulb is considered invasive in my neck of the woods. So anyway, I mean, I hope this is helpful for you, because we've definitely been planting a lot of bulbs and we've gotten a lot of questions on buying bulbs. But this is basically how I buy bulbs during the seasons and what I'm kind of planning for. So yeah, more bulb planting videos probably in the future. But otherwise, you could share your tips on how you get more bulbs for the buck, more bang for your buck, bulbs for the bang of your buck. I don't even know. All right, guys, I'll see you later. Bye.