Plants

Tulips! Tulips! Now the song is done!

That’s a song my uncle taught me when I was probably five years old.

♪ ♫ ♪ Tulips! Tulips! Now the song is done! ♪ ♫ ♪

Somehow, tulips have become my favorite flower over the years. They only bloom for a short amount of time in the Spring, but they are SO GORGEOUS when they do.

Both my boss and boyfriend got me tulips for my birthday in August, and they are SUPER hard to find at that time of year. They’re both the best for getting them for me then anyway.

Wednesday evening, a parent from the school contacted me about donating 100 tulip bulbs to the school. We weren’t sure where we would put them around the school, but the parent was okay with us giving them to any staff members who wanted to take any. They would need to be planted this weekend, or pretty quickly thereafter. So we said yes, and then the parent told me there were a lot more than 100. Sure. Bring them on.

And holy moly, there were a lot.

The tulip bulbs and yellow daffodil bulbs after one day of people taking from the pile. both tubs were full to the brim of bulbs!

I took some on Thursday for myself and grabbed some for my mom to plant at my sister’s new house this weekend. On Friday, I grabbed more to share with others. So. Many. Tulips. (And daffodils.)

This prompted a trip to Home Depot last night. I needed pots, soil, and at least a little trowel to plant them at my condo. Not having a yard is helpful most times when I’m busy but not when I want to expand my green thumb.

I didn’t want to spend a lot of money, so I got a few cheap, but cute, small blue plastic pots, and one big black plastic pot. They’ll do the trick for now. I wanted to get some cute pots like the ones below, but didn’t want to get something like that if the tulips weren’t actually going to grow.

I grabbed a couple bags of Miracle Grow potting soil, because while I don’t know a lot about plants, I do at least know I need something like this.

I did know to get some plastic plant drip saucers like this to go under the pots. I’m planning on keeping the tulips inside for at least a little while, so I don’t want to ruin my floors or the rug in my condo in the meantime.

(Links are from Amazon because I definitely would have bought all of this stuff from Amazon had I thought ahead this week.)

So this morning I decided to make a mess.

It’s 30 degrees outside today, so I was not about to plant these tulips out on my balcony this morning.

My Dyson vacuum was at the ready to clean up after potting the tulip bulbs, don’t you worry.

So I set to work. I took the advice from this article from Dutch Grown, and set to work.

I did the big pot first. I knew there would be more tulip bulbs that would go in there, so I wanted to make sure to fill that one up.

I filled it up a little bit with the potting soil mix to leave at least 8 inches of space for the tulips to grow. Then I put the bulbs in. I was able to fit 15 tulip bulbs in the pot! The article says in containers, you can have tulip bulbs be about an inch apart, so that’s what I did.

Once the bulbs were in, I covered them with more soil. And that was that.

I moved on to the smaller pots after that. I was able to fit 5-6 tulip bulbs in the smaller pots. *Here’s hoping that I didn’t over crowd them.*

I put the saucers under the pots, placed them by my balcony doors, and then watered them.

In the coldest part of my condo and the spot that gets the most light.

Now that I’m typing this, I think I forgot to fix the pots so that the draining holes are opened. I’m going to need to go back and fix that. I don’t want to rot the tulip bulbs before they’ve had a chance to grow. *sigh* Giving myself some grace here. 🙂

After I moved the pots and watered them I needed to vacuum badly. At one point, I had soil covering my leg while I was sitting cross legged on the ground. I tried to scoop as much of the soil off the floor and into the pots, but there was still some on the ground.

My handy dandy Dyson came to the rescue. Best. Birthday. Present. Ever. HAHA! This is 30. For sure.

Cleaning up the mess.

I’ll be keeping you updated on the growth of the tulips! I’m so excited to see how they grow.

Over the last few years, I’ve been trying to grow my green thumb, and this project is surely improving it! I’ve managed to keep a poinsettia alive in my office for at least three years, I can grow some tulips, right? Right.

So I’ll sing the song again.

♪ ♫ ♪ Tulips! Tulips! Now the song is done! ♪ ♫ ♪