Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat

Growing => General Gardening => Topic started by: WG. on September 23, 2007, 10:29

Title: gladioli
Post by: WG. on September 23, 2007, 10:29

Do you lift your gladiolus corms every winter please?  I have been doing so but would rather not be bothered if I can get away with leaving them in the ground.

Title: gladioli
Post by: Liz on September 23, 2007, 10:46

I don't lift mine and they keep flowering every year. I have lived here for six years and they were here then. They are planted beside a wall and I am in a warmer part of the uk to you, don't know if that makes a difference.  :)

Title: gladioli
Post by: WG. on September 23, 2007, 10:55

Thanks Liz - not many colder parts TBH.  Braemar maybe and that's about an hour from me.

Anyone else please?

Title: gladioli
Post by: muntjac on September 23, 2007, 12:56

i have em up and store em in sawdust after the soils brushed offen em .i sort out the smalls n plant em someplace else n then transfer em back the year after , i always put some good manure under em when i plants em mate :wink: ,so thick n tall ya can tie a cow s tail to em :wink:

Title: gladioli
Post by: gobs on September 23, 2007, 13:37

I just started growing them 2 years ago, no lifting etc, as my mom never did(much colder in Hungary), so I figured it must be rather about drainage and rot, than cold. So put them in a well draining place, they are fine.
I do not lift tulips or dahlias either, just need the time for me veg.

Title: gladioli
Post by: muntjac on September 23, 2007, 14:23

i lift all my bulbs and also my dahlias. as i grow spring bedding plants to go in so i give the soil a work out and then plant the bulbs with the bedding plants . good dahlias can be taken up and used for cuttings before you replant the tubers

Title: gladioli
Post by: Trillium on September 23, 2007, 14:42

Some people around me insist they leave their glads in for winter, but they have so many plants to begin with that I doubt they really notice. My guess is that the bulbs die over winter here. I lift all my glads, dahlias and canna bulbs for winter. Considering the cost of fresh outlay if I lost the gamble of live or die, I just won't risk it. Have left some corms and roots out to test and they all froze and died. However, there are some perennial glads, shorter than the annual ones, that can take freezing but are harder to find and costlier.
Regardless, I find I need to feed and turn the soil where they grew anyway so it's little difference pulling them in fall or trying to work around them in spring.

Title: gladioli
Post by: David. on September 23, 2007, 15:07

I grow about 300 for cut flowers, rotorvate over the top early spring for two years then take them up after the third year, keep in my shed and re-plant in spring.

Some one else on same allotment used to grow thousands and would simply rotorvate in and plant new corms about every third year.

It's clay soil, so I probably lose more than most over winter.

When they start getting a bit thin I plant french beans amongst them, all mulched with grass cuttings (as I do when it's just gladys).

Title: gladioli
Post by: Calou on September 23, 2007, 21:40

I've never lifted a bulb or anything else in the 20 odd years I've had my garden. My glads are huge and have wonderful blooms and they've been in the soil now for about 6 years but then it is milder down this way so this may not be much help to you WG.

Title: gladioli
Post by: Celtic Eagle on September 24, 2007, 12:30

Yep

Cannas Dahlias Glads all out the damp gets em other wise

An I think it's gonna be a cold one don't ask why i just feel it.