Keith Hansen

You've probably seen them in your mail box. Beautiful, slick colored catalogs filled with pages of beautiful photos of flowers.

It's fun to try something new, exotic, or promising. Gardeners love adventure and trying out new varieties. But, often there is a problem - most catalog companies offer plants, (including bulbs), advertised as being hardy, which have never had to live through a blistering, dry Texas summer. Or, for that matter, a wet, mild Texas winter - perfect rotting conditions. They don't know what "Texas-hardy" means.

Many popular bulbs with beautiful flowers often are not well-adapted to our growing conditions. This is particularly true of many bulbs produced in Holland. True, if you plant those beauties this fall, they will bloom beautifully next spring. But, then, that's it. If they do continue to come back in following years, it will usually be nothing but foliage, or few, rather than more, flowers.


MANY HURT BY MILD WINTERS

Many types of bulbs, like large trumpet daffodils and tulips, tend to rot in our wet, mild, wintertime conditions. So, we treat them as annuals, much like pansies and petunias. Which is OK, as long as you are aware they are not reliable perennials, coming back to bloom in succeeding years.

The good news is that there are many types and varieties of bulbs well adapted to Texas conditions that will come back year after year, increasing in beauty and bounty, faithfully blooming every winter and early spring to herald a new year.

One of the first heralds of spring in the South are the early-blooming white narcissus and paper-whites, filling the air with heady fragrance as early as late December and early January. Next are the many daffodil and narcissus varieties that are perfectly adapted to our area, coming back year after year, blooming from February through March and even into April and May.

Flowers range from the bold, large trumpet types to the petite, sweetly fragrant jonquils you see gracing East Texas roadsides.

Not all great bulbs bloom in spring. Some, like crinums, bloom off and on throughout summer, pushing out long flower stalks topped with fragrant flowers that can range from pure white to burgundy wine, depending on the cultivar.

TOUGH BULBS

Crinums are among the toughest of the tough, forming large bulbs that seem to pull themselves deep into the earth to survive long periods of drought. In early spring, a large fountain of foliage emerges, followed by attractive flowers in summer. Although the huge bulbs are more expensive than other types of bulbs, they rapidly multiply and return your investment for years to come.

The return of school is announced by various types of rain lilies, so named due to their habit of bursting into bloom shortly after a welcome late summer rain. Actually, many bloom off and on from mid-summer through fall. Oxblood lilies, schoolhouse lilies, surprise lilies, naked ladies, and spider lilies are among the common names for various members of this late summer and fall blooming group of bulbs.

Most of these types of bulbs are so tough they can survive for decades with no care whatsoever. It is not uncommon to find crinums, Johnson's amaryllis, narcissus, lycoris (spider lilies) and rain lilies blooming up a storm in country cemeteries, miles from a water hose, gracing markers often more than 100 years old.

Long-disappeared and forgotten walks, paths, flower borders, and foundations from abandoned home sites can be easily identified in spring when the almost indestructible narcissus continue to brightly mark the former owner's house and garden.

Many of these old reliable types are not readily available in the Dutch bulb trade, which is where the majority of bulbs are grown for mass markets. Texas horticulturists have learned that even some of the same types I mentioned, like the lycoris or spider lily, which are grown in Europe for export, do not have the same vigor or genetic hardiness as southern passalong bulbs shared by southern gardeners.

So, where can one get such bulbs that will faithfully return year after year, from southern sources? You are in luck as the Smith County Master Gardeners, a volunteer program of Texas Cooperative Extension, have for several years offered choice southern bulbs during their bulb sale, held in conjunction with the Fall Gardening Conference.

This year's 10th annual Fall Gardening Conference and Heirloom Bulb Sale and Garden Expo begins with registration at 7:30 a.m. Saturday. The programs begin at 8:30 a.m., at the Tyler Rose Garden Center and Harvey Convention Center.

More than 10,000 hard-to-find bulbs will be available, including many types of daffodils, narcissus and jonquils, plus crinums (a large and diverse selection of these tough-as-nails bulbs), hardy gladiolus, rain lilies, spider lilies (Lycoris), summer snowflakes, surprise lilies, oxblood lilies, Chinese ground orchid (Bletilla), crocosmia, hardy amaryllis and an assortment of other unusual plants.

For a preview of what bulbs are on order, and other details of the Conference and sale, go to http://easttexasgardening.tamu.edu and click on "Programs." Please note that the list is subject to change due to availability. Proceeds from the sale support Texas Cooperative Extension horticultural educational programs and projects in Smith County.

Lectures by outstanding gardeners and horticulturists will be featured at the expo.

The first conference speaker, Steven L. Chamblee, is the chief horticulturist for Chandor Gardens in Weatherford. He also serves as a consulting editor for Neil Sperry's Gardens magazine. Chamblee's topic, "Texas Tough Plants," will focus on heat and drought tolerant plants adapted to East Texas.

The other featured speaker will be Keith Kridler, a cultivator of antique and modern daffodils. His specialty is antique daffodils that are no longer commercially grown, and his collection includes more than 900 named varieties. Kridler is the chairman of the Historic Daffodil Committee, and he serves on the board of directors of the American Daffodil Society. His presentation will tell how to select, plant and care for daffodil bulbs.

During the conference there will be a photo review of the bulb varieties offered in the sale.

Following the Conference ending at 11:15 a.m., activities move over to Harvey Convention Center. The Heirloom Bulb Sale and Plant Expo feature thousands of bulbs and other plants, exhibitors, vendors, and plant demonstrations and workshops. No bulbs will be sold prior to 11:30 a.m.

During the Conference and Plant Expo you will have an opportunity to register for raffle items, and be sure to check out all the photos at the Plant Expo submitted for the first-ever photo contest.

(Keith Hanson)