If you have flower beds in your garden, now is the time to think about next year’s blooms. A huge array of daffodils or tulips, for example, will require that you purchase your bulbs in the next three weeks and plant them immediately. Bulbs such as these need an entire winter of frost to encourage them to grow next spring.

One of the first plants to come up in the spring is siberian squill (scilla siberica). If you plant 50 or 100 bulbs, the blue-colored flowers will gradually spread to cover a huge area. Another early bloomer is anemone blanda (wind flowers). Match it with siberian squill and you will have a nice blue and white field against which to set a few pink or red tulips to give you dots of color among the early flowers. If you want yellow flowers, you can plant yellow crocus, eranthis or even daffodils.

The earliest flowers are usually anemone blanda. In fact, mine were so early last year that a late snowfall buried them. These flowers typically come up in mid to late April, although I have seen a few appear as early as March.

For later flowers, invest in daffodils, narcissus and tulips. But be aware that tulips seem to be loved by deer who eat the entire plant, so you will need to spray with Deer Off or a similar repellant. This means that you probably won’t enjoy the aroma of the early narcissus, but you’ll see the flowers.

Daffodils

Two hundred years ago, William Wordsworth walked along the shore of Lake Ullswater where he saw “a host of golden daffodils.” But it wasn’t until 1804 that Wordsworth penned his famous poem. Descendents of those original daffodils are still blooming beside the lake in the early April mists.

Daffodils are members of the narcissus family, of which there are about 60 species. Basically, narcissus blooms with a long central trumpet are called daffodils, but within that classification are many varieties. Some have a single long yellow trumpet with yellow petals, others have a white, orange or even pink trumpets with white or yellow petals. You can also get double and ruffled trumpet varieties in any of the colors, so your choices are vast.

Plant daffodils in the fall – right about now. Dig a hole so that the bulb is buried about equal to its length, and remember: point up, fat end down. When you dig the hole, drop in a teaspoon of general purpose fertilizer and mix it with the soil in the bottom of the hole. If you use blood meal, it is a sure bet that rodents will dig up your bulbs, so use a regular fertilizer (if you have rodent problems, put chicken wire over the bulb bed and cover it with mulch). That’s all you need do. Now, you can forget about the bulbs until spring. Remember though, that if you order a bag of 100 bulbs, you’ll have to dig 100 holes! But they should last up to 20 years or more if you take care of them.

Narcissus

The paperwhites that you buy for Christmas flowers are from the narcissus family. These multiheaded white or yellow flowers bring a fresh scent to your living room when nothing else is blooming. If you buy narcissus, they take about six to eight weeks to bloom from planting, so somewhere around the first or second week of November, you should plant them if you want to have Christmas blooms. Keep bulbs in the refrigerator until you plant to preserve the coolness that will help promote fast growth. When the bulbs have flowered, let the plants grow until the leaves drop, then save the bulbs in the refrigerator or a cool place until next fall.

Hyacinth

Blue and pink hyacinths have one of the most fragrant aromas in spring. The bulbs produce one tall (about eight to 10 inches) multifl owered stalk and on a warm spring day, the fragrance allows you to imagine that summer is not that far off.

Amaryllis

Another flower to grow for Christmas is amaryllis. This native of Africa cannot be planted outdoors and is best potted at about the end of October. The heads are huge, with three or four beautiful red, pink or orange trumpet-shaped flowers. Again, as with all bulbs, give them a boost with a little fertilizer when you plant them.

So now you can rush out and buy a ton of bulbs for next spring’s garden. But don’t blame me when your back aches from planting them. Digging holes for bulbs is a chore, but once it is done, it will reward you with spring flowers for years to come.