Gardeners, question about planting bulbs

This is the first year I've been planting in our yard, and my mom never did this stuff either, so it's all new to me.

I'm starting to think about which bulbs I want to order to plant in the fall. Say I plant a tulip bulb 6 inches down, can I plant something that they say 2 inches down, say a crocus, 4 inches on top of that? I know that usually crocus bloom before tulips, but I didn't know if you could plant them on top of each other.

Re: Gardeners, question about planting bulbs

I've done that with container plantings but made sure that the tulips were late bloomers, not early bloomers. If they're early, both would be blooming at the same time and competing for space.

I think if you moved the crocus over just an inch or two, it might be a better situation. We dug a trench instead of doing individual bulb holes, since we were planting over a 100 at that time. It actually made it a lot easier to space them out the way we wanted.

You're not planting now, are you? The best time to plant bulbs is the fall. Also, you might want to consider squirrels digging them up and eating them, there are some methods you could use like planting daffodils in the same spot (they hate daffodils) or using chicken wire.

I hope this helps!

Re: Gardeners, question about planting bulbs

Thanks, that makes a lot of sense. I have really big beds all around the house, so the trenches sound good to me!

I'm not planting now. I'm starting to look at gardening books to get an idea of what I want to do along the street side my fence on the side of the house (over 40 feet long!) so it got me thinking about which bulbs I would include too. I'm trying to be conscious of having stuff blooming at different times.