People do it, and it will work, but it does put unnecessary stress on the plant. I think the best, short of the frig, is what you are doing: keeping it in the cooler in the garage. The cooler will moderate the temps, keeping it cold without experiencing the extra cold blasts of the morning when you open the garage door to leave for work, etc. If the bulb starts to sprout, then you will have to pot it up. Sprouting, without a root compliment to feed it, is a bad thing.

Thanks for the advice! I will keep them right where they are then. Amazingly there have been some signs this week that spring might actually be on it's way. I even saw my first robin!

Hello aka Margo~
may I ask where you ordered your lily bulbs that were the size of grapefruit??

I ordered them from the Lily Pad. Always had great experience with them.

So now that it's warmed up, do you think I can plant the lily bulbs? That's if the ground isn't frozen.

IF you can work the soil deep enough, and IF it's not a sticky mess...you can plant anything hardy enough.

Dave
Milwaukee

I planted them last weekend when it was so nice. My soil was actually really easy to dig and not wet at all. I'm sure it wouldn't be that way right now. But at least they received plenty of water this week, even if we didn't like it the plants sure did.