Digging Up Bulbs & Replanting Bulbs

No, this picture wasn't taken today! It was, in fact, taken the first day of March this year. As you can clearly see, this beautiful clump of "tete-a-tete" daffodils is way to crowded. I tried to count the blooms and I think there were over 60 in this clump. And if you look closely to the right side of the daffodils you can see some Grape Hyacinth leaves trying to poke and find some sunlight. Clearly, it was past time to dug up the bulbs and do some dividing and replanting.

So tonight after work and dinner we worked on this project. First off, we added quite a few tractor bucket loads of Natures Best soil to the flower bed. The back of the bed needed quite a bit added and the front needed some leveling off as well. Then I gently took a spade to the spot where the daffodil bulbs were actually heaving out of the ground due to over crowding. I dug and dug and was amazed at how deeply they were stacked in the ground. I tries my best to distinguish between the daffodil bulbs and the grape hyacinth bulbs. It would have been a lot easier if they were different colors or something! When I was finally done I had a full cardboard box of "tete-a-tete" bulbs, pictured above, and half of box of grape hyacinth bulbs, pictured below.

I had so many "tete-a-tete" after digging up the bulbs I decided to make two new clumps out of them. You can see in the above photo that all of the bulbs had long, healthy root systems.

Then I dug a a third hole for the grape hyacinths. I am guessing that I have a few - how many ? - baby daffodil bulbs mixed in here. It will be fun to watch next Spring and see how good my guessing was. I was careful to give all of the bulbs room so that they could divide and naturalize for a few years without becoming too crowded again. When I was all done I stuck three wooden markers in the ground above each circle of bulbs so that I won't accidentally plant something else in that spot. A project completed!