Tulipa

There have been frosts and the soil is cooling. It is time to plant tulips. I was taught, when I was training, that planting tulips after frost reduced the incidence of ‘tulip fire’, a fungal infection which distorts the leaves and flowers. Even if new bulbs are bought each year – and it is more economical to do this than to try and save bulbs year to year – I want to keep my soil ‘clean’, if possible. So, I have been planting tulips in the cutting beds: 4300 tulips.

Like a rower, I work backwards, and the distance I have planted waxes as the unplanted ground wanes. I find this easier as, whilst I work, I am at looking at the work done, not the work still to be done. My soil is clay marl and seems to absorb atmospheric moisture like a sponge, never mind the precipitation, which has been slight. I need to clean the blade of the trowel with my thumb between each penetration of the earth. When planting tulips to be cut for their flowers rather than for for their display in situ, a spacing of 15cm/6″ in appropriate. I line out two rows at a time as that is the furthest I can reach comfortably from the board which spreads my mass evenly over the easily compacted clay. Each bulb is planted 15cm/6″ deep – the same depth, the same distance, as the the length of the trowel’s blade. The tool carries my guide in its form.  At other times, I use my hand. My clenched left fist is 9cm/4″ wide, and thus my measure for sowing beetroot, for example. My span is 22cm – I have just measured it – but it was always a reliable 8″ which I would use for planting lettuces, removing half the crop as baby lettuce, leaving the rest to mature further.

Tulips are classed as a tunicate bulb, meaning they have a skin or tunic, a papery outer layer which protects the life within. Modern cultivars have a loose association with their coats and often arrive naked and white. Perhaps it is the time of year – a week after the Armistice Day centenary, or the manner of rowing them out before I plant, but there is something reminiscent of the simple white stones of the British cemeteries in northern France, stretching out in lines without apparent end. Planting bulbs is quiet work, patient work. I have settled to it and I am asking myself, why do we plant gardens for our dead? Or, why do we plant our dead in gardens? I am thinking too of the Thomas poem  – these ‘silent detonations of power without sin’. I am planting a minefield of future beauty, certainly. What does that make the tulip flowers of next April and May? – explosions of colour and beauty, for sure. Are they the resurrected soul of the buried bulb? Possibly. One of my thousand penetrations of the soil today brought up, on its return, a bright green caterpillar. It will be eaten by a bird or die otherwise – it won’t survive its exposure at this time of year. But, I realised as I worked, that I have no idea whether I am a caterpillar or a butterfly.