Help ! my alliums are sprouting.. in November ! (flower, growing, weeds)

[bluefeather1978]

so I bought a ton of Allium to cover a sunny slope, ordered them from John Scheepers and planted them a month ago, mod october. I didn't expect them to sprout but they already are ! should I have done something different ? can i expect blooms next year ?

on a separate note, should I mulch it now ? I am located in Seattle.

[Zoisite]

Originally Posted by bluefeather1978

so I bought a ton of Allium to cover a sunny slope, ordered them from John Scheepers and planted them a month ago, mod october. I didn't expect them to sprout but they already are ! should I have done something different ? can i expect blooms next year ?

on a separate note, should I mulch it now ? I am located in Seattle.

They will be okay. You didn't do anything wrong. You couldn't have anticipated that our west coast would be having such warm, wet spring like weather in November. Your alliums aren't the only bulbs here on the coast that are confused and thinking that spring is here. All of my bulb plants are sprouting now and I have some very optimistic easter lilies out there that are in full bloom already and more that are just starting to set new flower buds.

As long as your allium bulbs don't rot from too much rain turning your slope into a soggy mudbank your bulbs should be okay. They will not grow really fast over winter even if it is warm out, because there isn't enough hours of daylight to encourage them. They will stay tentative. By December it should be colder and your allium bulbs will go dormant enough that they will just stop growing and the shoots may even retract back down into the bulbs. If it gets very, very cold (which is unlikely) the bulbs will actually pull themselves with their roots to sink deeper down into the ground.

The west coast climate is changing and giving us progressively warmer and warmer winters each year so keep that in mind and from now on DO anticipate it when you are planting bulbs in the future. Instead of putting them in the ground in October wait until mid to late November when the ground is colder.

Your allium bulbs should flower just fine next year but they will probably come up and flower sooner than expected.

If you were planning on mulching it then there's no reason why you shouldn't do so now. The mulch will help keep back some of the weeds that are just as confused as the bulbs and are also still growing now, albeit slowly.

.

[bluefeather1978]

Thanks for that heartening reply Zoisite ! I am sick of my black thumb killing my plants

[jacqueg]

This Seattle-dweller agrees with zoisite.

My garlic not infrequently pokes its head aboveground this time of year. Then it just sits until February or so. Not to worry.

If you do mulch, make sure that your mulch will not pack down too much. I do this by laying a network of branches down over the bed, then filling in with mulch. Keep an eye on things, and when you see lots of shoots in active growth next spring, start reducing the mulch depth, in order to help warm up the soil. But I always leave a thin layer of mulch on to help protect the soil from being beaten to death by spring rains.

As for your "black thumb" - you have to kill a certain number of plants in order to turn your thumb green, unless you learned gardening at someone's knee!

[LoriNJ]

My daffodils frequently start poking their heads out during a warm spell. Then when it gets cold again, they say uh, oh and stop growing. I have never had them attempt to bloom and I think the explanation of too little light probably explains that, too. We had a very warm December here last year in NJ, and I was so worried my spring bulbs would be harmed because they were all poking up through the ground. But we eventually got cold weather and spring bulbs were beautiful.