Planting CAMASSIA—Underutilized Bulbs

Hi everyone, we're here on a gorgeous fall day yet again. Blue skies, just a little bit of wind, and we have some more of our bulbs to plant. And this time around we're going to be planting camassia, which I think is a really underappreciated bulb. You'll see earlier in the year we had a number of camassia that were growing up here and also towards the tail end over there I had planted them. And when I had planted this, first of all this is all grass before, so we didn't have these ginormous beds. But before any of this was put in, I had this idea just to plant some camassia. I got kind of an estate version they're called, so you get like a bunch of them, like a hundred in a package or whatever. And I was like, those are gorgeous, I'd like to, you know, kind of plant them in. And they came up with the grass. And typically camassia are found on the western coast of the United States, so kind of towards the Pacific Northwest, depending on which species, all the way down maybe into California as well. And you'll see them as drifts of these tall blue, sometimes white racemes, so these kind of spiky flowers that have these starry florets on them, in meadows. So that's typically where they're found normally in lightly dappled shade or full sun. And this is one of those plants that is considered both a food plant, as well as a plant that has great horticultural value for the blooms. And even though it's kind of fallen out of favor as far as like a food stuff goes, it was something that was used by many of the native peoples in the United States. And I think that the closest representation, maybe not exactly to flavor, is the lampassioni. I'm probably pronouncing it wrong, but I have gotten some from Italy. And normally they take the bulb of like muscari, which is also in the same family of asparagusii, so it's similar to a bulb, like wild hyacinths essentially. And they either cook it for a long period of time or steam it. And it tastes to me similar, like the hyacinth bulbs taste similar to me, like a little starchy, it has the texture of an onion, but a bit more like nutty. I would say even like a kind of texture almost like a water chestnut, although not as gritty, but definitely nuttier. And these are primarily starchy plants. So let me show you them. And they are very similar to like maybe a Jerusalem artichoke. So this one is Camassia lecleana cerulea. So these are the blue versions. So you can see they're quite large bulbs and they have a tremendous amount of inulin in them, which is a very complex carbohydrate that you actually can't digest, but the bacteria in your gut can digest. And so it's similar to like a where if you eat them a bit less cooked or raw even, that you'll just have gas. You'll be farting left and right. But these, if they cook for a long low time, even if you pressure cook them and they start caramelizing, then they'll get a little less starchy and more sweet. So this was a foodstuff and could be used as a foodstuff. It might not be worth all the effort, but like I said, I've enjoyed wild hyacinth bulbs and I am growing kind of more of our native adjacent kind here, which is called, and you may have seen them in some of my earlier videos, Camassia siloides. And when I mean by native adjacent, I mean that it's not growing in this region. It's actually growing either in maybe a different part of New York, but in this case or more likely in a different state. So like Pennsylvania or further south of us or something of that nature. So I've planted a lot of Camassia siloides, but this one is a little less native because they're coming from our west coast and I'm here on the east coast of New York. But let me just show you these. So again, big kind of beautiful bulbs here. So that's select liana. I'll show you the alba version. So these are ones that are white. Obviously you can't see because they're not in bloom. So typically these will bloom in May or June and they bloom from the bottom up. Because remember it's on this long raceme, so it's like this long candelabra style stalk of flowers. And my experience is that they bloom over the course of like maybe two to four weeks. And I have them growing here, which gets a little bit more sun. Then I'll take you over here. I probably won't plant them in here. I like to plant them on the edge. But I had a number of them growing in this little nook over here in the grass. And you could see that it's shaded by this white pine. And we have this smoke bush which will definitely get larger. And then we have all this nettle and hemp dog bane and everything. So I have it growing through here and you can already see it's it's shaded for most of the day. And I've noticed that these will flower a lot later, like several weeks later. And they'll bloom for a longer period of time because I don't think they're getting as much sun as the ones over there. So that's something to take note of, especially if you're choosing to grow them in maybe a partially sunny spot versus a full sun spot. Another thing is that these are quite hefty bulbs. So you'll see that I've like planted crocuses and a number of others that are quite small. So I'm putting them only two to three inches deep. I'm generally putting these down maybe six to eight inches, which I personally like because when I'm planting them I'll often go and plant the anemones or tulips or crocuses or even daffodils on top of that. So I could plant it in the same layer but not as deep as the other one. So this is the deepest. So say these are the camassia and then I'll plant like tulip bulbs here and I'll plant maybe anemone or crocus up here. So I could plant them just like as a like a layered cake and then I won't have to bother these, which is a good thing because once these are in the place that they are, they don't really like to be disturbed. You can divide them and typically it's best to divide them after they flower. So in the summer months because they're blooming in like a late spring May June time frame and you could then divide them in the summer months and they will get bigger and start getting little bulblets off the side and they'll propagate all kind of around and just make this really beautiful sea of blue or white or whatever you're typically planting. Now I have another one that I got. This is my first time getting this one. So this is a white version of the lechlineae but it has a yellow edging on the leaves. So it's a little variegated. So that would be a new one for me. And then this is another one, another species. So I said lechlineae is one and this is quamash, camassia quamash. And you can see the bulbs are a little smaller here and again these were used as food stuffs. And then I have the camassia siloides and I did not plant the camassia siloides down here which is the native adjacent one. That one I planted in the herb garden and I also planted in my orchard. Anyway so I thought let's uh let's actually take some time to plant these. And I think they personally look good with alliums and I probably won't plant all of my alliums. I have some alliums that I'm going to plant later in this garden. The downside right now is for anybody watching this when I'm filming this is during the longshoreman strike which basically anything that's coming from overseas is being stopped at the ports on the east coast. And unfortunately I got a notification from some of the bulb companies that the bulbs are stuck off the east coast which is really unfortunate. I mean they say that they're in climate controlled containers but I don't know how long that the strike is going to go on for. So I've gotten some of the bulbs which I'm pleased about but some of them you know I hope that they come in but it's probably not the worst thing in the world. There's a lot of things that people probably need like medicines and foods that are not coming in as well. But anyway so I'm going to use a little bit of bulb tone and you'll see how deep I'm going to plant these. And I'm glad I kind of built this area up quite high because I could go down six to eight inches more easily here. And I will be planting tulip bulbs probably in the next one to two weeks. And I will be planting tulip bulbs probably right on top of these so I want to make sure I go down as far as possible. Now once these plants are growing another wonderful thing about them is that they are deer and rodent resistant. Which you know the deer don't come and like nip off the flowers which is quite nice. And I should also say that they have really grassy strap like leaves which I find to be really attractive in plants especially because here before I put the cardboard and the mulch and the wood chips on top of this area it was growing in with the grass and I thought I'd like that look but I just did not like the grass that was here and I was constantly trying to cut the grass down around the bulbs and I accidentally cut off some of the bulbs because again the leaves look very strappy and grass like. So yeah but a great bulb not one that I often see in a lot of gardens and I think that folks would actually enjoy planting this because I think it's a really really attractive bulb and you could go with like I said purples, lavenders, they have ones that are kind of a little bit more lavender pinks and then others that are a little bit more like blues and purples and whites. Some that are more creamy whites some that are a bit more like vanilla whites. And these will naturalize really well as well and like I said as long as you're not disturbing them so much. One thing I will say about their blooms and I'm not sure if I already said it but they will not bloom all at once but they'll start from the bottom and then they'll go up to the top which is why they have such a long blooming season. I think if they were all blooming at once then they might last for a week but the reason why they have blooms for up to four weeks is because they start on the bottom and then go up to the top so the last flowers that will be blooming will be at the tip. And then after that they start, oh look at the little woolly bear he's out on a sunny day. Try not to step on him. Once May and June passes they'll start to get like yellow foliage and that may look a little unsightly so planting in perennials around them that could hide that unsightly foliage is a good plan. So you'll see that I have a number of perennials here. You might not be able to tell what they are but I have a number of geraniums and anemones that are planted in here and I'll continue to plant more perennials in here. As they come up I can start to see what they look like and where I could actually plant those perennials. But if I'm planting small plants that are maybe like little plugs that are only like four inches down then I'm still planting them on top of those bulbs which is great. It's like you're you're planting in layers but in the same in the same column but just a different row essentially. Yeah so that is the camassia. I'm going to finish the rest of these throughout here. I'm going to space them about 10 to 12 inches because they do quite a get quite a bit beefy. And then I'll just plant some over here and maybe towards the back. We'll see these come up in May to June. All right see you later. If you've been enjoying these videos give the channel a follow, tap the notifications button so you know when we drop the next video, and become a member of the channel to support our work. We'll be wrapping up the garden shores here in the next couple months and switching gears to more renovations and interviews around the area. So stay tuned here. We'll see you in the next video.