Henry Homeyer: Improving soil and planting bulbs — outside and in

By Henry Homeyer
©2026 Telegraph Publishing LLC

It will soon be time to gather up your leaves and store them for use in the garden. If you can run over them with your mower to chop them up, they’ll break down quicker, becoming a nice source of organic matter to improve the soil in your vegetable garden, or to use as mulch in flower beds.

If you leave them on the lawn, they may smother the grass, come spring, so do it now. If you have a huge quantity of leaves and no way to chop them up, just put them in a pile, and in two or three years they will be completely broken down for use as compost.

I’m already looking ahead to my next gardening season. In October, I plant my garlic crop, which I’ll harvest next August. I save some bulbs from this year’s crop and use them for planting now. Of course, you can buy “seed garlic” if you didn’t grow any this year or want to eat all you grew. But don’t plant grocery store garlic because it probably has been treated to keep it from sprouting. And it probably is the wrong kind for our climate: We need to grow stiff-neck garlic, not the kind with stems you can braid.

I pick my biggest, best garlic for planting. Each bulb gives me four to eight cloves, which I’ll plant 3-inches apart and 3-inches deep. You should work the soil well, to make it loose and fluffy. Add compost if it is not rich. My soil is very rich, but I still add some organic fertilizer to the rows. Cover the cloves with soil, pat it down, then add a thick layer of straw or hay over the bed. That will keep the soil warm for a while, encouraging roots to grow now, before winter. In the spring the garlic will push through the straw, but not many weeds will. It’s my easiest crop to grow, and it stores well in a cool place for months.

I like to buy early blooming daffodils to pot up for  forcing. Forcing spring bulbs means to pot up bulbs, letting them rest in a cool place for eight to 16 weeks, then bringing them into the warmth of the house to bloom early on a sunny windowsill. Small bulbs like crocus take eight weeks, daffodils 10 to 12 weeks and tulips 14 to 16 weeks. So if you pot up bulbs this month, you can have blossoms indoors in January or February. Little daffodils like Tête-à-Tête are great for forcing, and I like to pot some in 4-inch pots for gifts, crowding three to four bulbs in each.

To fill your pots, you can re-use the potting soil from pots of annuals you grew on your porch or steps this summer, buy potting soil, or make your own. I make a wheelbarrow of potting soil for forcing using a mix of good compost I get each year by the truckload, garden soil, peat moss and perlite. Perlite is the white fluffy stuff you see in potting soils that looks like Styrofoam but is really heat-expanded mica.

The compost I get is rich, dark and fluffy, and it comprises at least 50% of my mix. I soak peat moss and break up any lumps before mixing it in; it’s about 25% of the mix. I like to add a little garden soil, too. And perlite – too helps keep it fluffy and holds water. The mix should be loose and fluffy. Forced bulbs don’t need fertilizer – they have everything they need to bloom.

Then there are the amaryllis bulbs I get to re-bloom every year. I keep them in their pots all summer, leaving them outside in a sunny spot. Now I bring them indoors to my cool, dark cellar. They need to go dormant – cut off the leaves and put each in a paper bag. Keep at a temperature of 50 degrees or cooler for 5 or 6 weeks. Then bring them into your house, water, and put on a sunny windowsill.

October is the month for planting bulbs outdoors. I started planting spring bulbs in 1983, I think, and have planted some every year since. I now have uncountable numbers each year, but still plant more. Most spring bulbs live for many decades, but not tulips. Tulips I treat as annuals. I have some daffodils I dug up at my boyhood home more than 40 years ago, they were old then – yet they still bloom every year.

Early spring bloomers can be planted in a shady area – they recharge the bulbs early, before leaves come out; daffodils can be planted along a woodland path, but really excel in full sun. If you plant snowdrops on a south-facing hillside, they should bloom in early March. Winter aconite, a lesser-known, low, brilliant-yellow flower, will bloom with them. Both will spread nicely over time.

I was visiting a public garden in Wales one September when a groundskeeper was planting daffodils in the lawn. He confounded me when he took a 5-gallon pail of old tennis balls, and flung them all out on a gentle hillside. “Why, pray tell, did you do that,” I asked. “Oh,” he replied,” I want a random planting, not rows or circles of bulbs.” I’ve never done that, as I want my daffodil to get lots of sunshine each spring, and bulbs in a lawn won’t be ready to be cut back until the Fourth of July. Maybe their budget allows them to re-plant each fall.

To save labor, I excavate a spot suitable for planting one to three dozen bulbs: an oval, a circle or an amoeba. I put stones and sod in a bucket, good soil in a wheelbarrow. For big bulbs like daffodils, the hole is 6 inches deep; for small bulbs, just 2 to 3 inches deep. I loosen the soil with a hand tool, my CobraHead weeder. If soil is poor, I add some compost and stir it in. Then I always add a slow-release organic fertilizer. Choose your site well: Most bulbs do not like to grow in consistently moist or wet soil. Thalia is a daffodil that does not mind it.

There is much to do in your garden on a sunny fall day. But don’t forget to pause and admire a blue sky and puffy white clouds.