Hit the Dirt; Bulb Season

Hi there this is Claire Ackroyd and you're listening to hit the dirt we're deep into planting season right now and I hope that you are all not overlooking the alliums I thought I'd spend a little minute talking about Alliums The Onion bulbs onion family bulbs it's a large family there's a great number of not old Bulbus alliums they're all very there's a lot of very very nice garden subjects within this group which are generally rather overlooked quite wrongly there's a lot of very hardy bulbs that will multiply and spread in your garden. They're very carefree plants. Most of them if all of them like a rather warm well drained spot they are the plants of the hillsides of Turkey and California and I don't know why. And they like a sort of dry warm place to grow. But there are a lot of very nice hardy ones in the store as you will probably see Allium color any eye which is a little white one that spreads like a weed and it blooms very early. These are dirt cheap. These are a whole handful for a couple of bucks. Allium Ali also known as already and which is the only other one. An Allium of Starsky 3 that I like a

lot that's a little pink one go very well in rock gardens and then a little bit later and taller but still very small cheap bulbs. There's Allium as Zuri I'm also known as surly and which is a blue one. Try thought about only the summer blooms in the middle of summer with a lovely sort of grey powder blue flower and Sparrow saffron which is known as drumsticks which I think is a rather dull thing but it's quite a useful sort of spike. It's a ball on a stick. Very extreme shaped thing like a little drumstick and it'll sort of pop up in between things and bloom in July and then there's the extraordinary huge alliums Allium gigantic which blooms five feet high and it's completely outrageous and in fact it's not that hard to hear and then there's this extremely interesting collection of big rather expensive bulbs which many stores don't carry if you've got specialty catalogs all of them are worth exploring. The most interesting being this thing that is called Globemaster which is a Dutch produced hybrid that is amazing. And

I can tell you it is everything it's cracked up to be. The bulbs are currently costing six or seven dollars apiece. A few years ago they were $13 a piece so they're coming down these really do bloom all. Some are practically there one flower keeps on producing one flower cluster keeps on producing new flowers and they will bloom for weeks on end. They're very hardy and it's an extraordinary plant and quite well worth growing. Now I found in Louise Bibi Wilders book called Hardy bulbs she was a New York gardener writing in the 30s. There's a lovely quote here which I'm going to read about the little yellow alley in Mali Oriya. She says well the yellow Molly was popular in an earlier day chiefly doubtless because of its yellow flowers went all over then known members of the race ran so monotonously through rosy pinkness or to white. But perhaps it's focused you also somewhat to the belief voiced by Alphonse har botanist a poet that you can spill salt meat a spider a hare may run across your path. A crow may fly past on your left hand. You may sit down thirteen to

dinner you may do anything you like on a Friday and snap your fingers. If you have Alan or him in your garden. She goes on to say that many persons who have it in their gardens do not know but it is true this city was vegetable that there is standing. Good luck and fortune and prosperity may be ascribed But of course that will progress to an anxious persons began to depend on holy water. Abracadabra rabbits feet on the Stock Exchange to protect them from evil and the yellow Molly who was discarded but it lingered on bravely in certain old gardens. And now is coming back to notice and perhaps in these pinching times it is its infallibility may gain be credited mystical It marred it and grow it and that in itself is enough to give it place in the best society. So it's kind of nice to see the 1936 people feeling pinched and in need of something to ward off evil. I think it sort of time for that one to come around again so here's to a new vogue for Allie and Molly to ward off evil spirits and bankruptcy and enjoy planting bulbs in your garden and I'll be back on the air again in a week.