Sunday Sentiments: Spring Blooms Around Our Home + How to Store Bulbs

Happy springtime, y’all! We have been enjoying spring-like weather for about a month now. Some blustery days, some nights into the high-forties and fifties, but still really comfortable. This garden tour 2025 is heavy on photographs, so grab a cup of your favorite beverage and… Let’s check out this year’s blooms!!! 🙂

For our Sunday Sentiments, I found this lovely Biblical quote to share…

11 The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.”

Isaiah 58:11 NIV

I think with our political scene and iffy economy, we all could use a quick acknowledgement that God is always for us, no matter what we are going through. Lately for me, it’s my right hip… Ever since that fall on Election Night, it has become a real pain. It is healing, but slowly. Two trips to the chiropractor so far to pop it back in. 🙂

Hopefully you are doing well and that you are healthy!

Let’s jump into our garden with a little how-to store bulbs.

How to prep and store bulbs

Last spring, I pulled bulbs after they had died back to save to replant again this year. Here is what you do:

• Dig up each bulb after all of the leaves of the tulips, daffodils and alstroemeria have died back, feeding each bulb with energy for the next season.

• Let your bulbs dry out for a week or so, then dust off as much dirt as you can before putting them in a mesh bag. Hang to continue drying in a cool, dry place. I hung our bulbs in the wood greenhouse/ shed. Not exactly cool in summer, but no direct sunlight on them and they have come back fine. (no photos, bummer!)
• This fall, I gave them all a cold-period from late October into winter in a mini refrigerator we have out in the garage. Bulbs, tulips and daffodils especially, need two months of cold to perform well before replanting. Often they will come from the grower already chilled.
• Replant like you would for each type of bulb ~ approximately 1″-2″ for alstroemeria, 2″ for daffodils, and 4″ or more for tulips. I keep the original plant tags for reference on bulb planting depth.

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Spring bulb planting during winter

If you like adding in some plant food at the time you plant, that can certainly be added! 🙂 Sometimes you can find Bulb-Tone by Espoma (not sponsored) but we don’t have it at our local big box stores. I have heard that it is not necessary to add fertilizer but I could see that fertilizer could intensify each bulb’s color. 🙂

I think I gave them all Bio-Tone Starter Fertilizer or Plant-Tone but honestly I don’t remember at this point. 😉 I did use soft, new dirt made from out compost…

I planted these bulbs late (in January); however, they have come up beautifully! Putting them in the refrigerator with the other bulbs I think helped the cold process. We did not have a really long cold winter this year so this step was really necessary.

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Spring has sprung!

Here outfront, in our two urns, I planted the same combination of five tulips found at our local Winco along with these sweet little violet pansies (may be violas).

Oddly enough, the right-hand urn grew great and the left-hand one, the tulips started to come up, but then didn’t come up. I noticed that it received more sunlight than the other urn.

May be that’s the issue??

I have no idea what happened; maybe the local squirrels got them. Could be. There was a lot of digging, at least around the edges amongst the pansies/violas.

Any ideas??

Here you can see all the chickenwire pieces I laid across any pot planted with bulbs to keep the critters out. Maybe I should have also done this outfront. Next year!

In our backyard pots, I kinda did something similar to 2024’s planting with filling a bunch of pots with bulbs.

I am trying to get a really pretty spring flower showing like Claus Dalby shares on Instagram from his gorgeous garden in Denmark.

Mr. Dalby is also on YouTube, of which I found him through another gardener, Linda Vater, who lives up in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. I drove by her former home one time and saw her spring garden back in 2021. That home and tour of Oklahoma City is linked above.

Here is a link to one of Mr. Dalby’s gorgeous books… I would love to have hundreds of pots to plant up, but that’s a whole lot of green $$$ and I don’t have the budget.

Smaller displays are just as lovely without the expense, and I think we all can achieve a similar look without going broke in the process, lol! 😉

In the backyard infront of the big shed I use as a greenhouse in winter, the tulips came up great! I DID put chickenwire overtop of each pot until the bulbs had really come up.

In this blue pot, I really planted it out fully with 15 or 20 bulbs, and it just packs a real color punch! Love this!!!

The main group out in back with plants brought out from overwintering in the shed ~ left side.

And those planters on the right side. The roses began leafing at the end of January and I had to cover them when a second cold snap came through but all made it, plus the hydrangea, without losing any buds.

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Elsewhere in the back garden…

The hellebores came up in late January/early February and I covered them with frost cloth but may not have needed to do this (not sure). We are a zone 8 weatherwise but can get down to single-digits, which is garden zone 7.5 still. So, I treat our plants for the latter.

The hellebores are really pretty this year and I’ve been trying to pick up more as they go off-season (cheaper). The pink one I found in Dallas last year at Ruibal’s Nursery and garden center I shared during my Spring Break.

I think I paid about $20 for just the one ~ a bit of a splurge but worth it for its longevity blooming! These guys have been blooming for over a month now. 🙂

The potted climbing roses have leafed out and I have sprayed for mites already and fed them with a 3-in-One fertilizer, fungicide, mite-acide twice now.

Here they are coming into the end of March (March 29th). We should have the first round of rose blooms soon! It’s amazing what just a month or so makes in a garden. 🙂

The red crepe myrtle we transplanted while still dormant about a month ago, as Hubby needed to get to the area right where it was (he’s moving our water softener tanks out front, another post!), it is doing well.

It has leafed out! No transplant shock ~ yeah!!! We caught it just in time.

Garden tip:

The two smaller urns flanking the wrought iron and aluminum French-style fencing have been repotted with lantana I overwintered in the shed. They are both doing well and beginning to regrow. Each urn has been underplanted with sweet alyssum seeds which are just beginning to come up.

Here is our potted garden at peak bloom last weekend (March 22nd). It is really still very pretty… One final look as we close…

Thank you for touring my Spring 2025 garden with me! The cold winter afternoons planting up these bulbs sure was worth it. 😉

Let me know how your gardens are doing and what’s in bloom where you are.

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Happy spring to you,