Store These Seven Tender Bulbs Over Winter

Totally different tender bulbs and fleshy, underground stems like corms, tubers, and rhizomes require related methods to organize them for winter hibernation. It’s essential to test your climate stories for in a single day frosts whereas maintaining a tally of flower stalks, as dropping temperatures will kill them again. You’ll wish to let the aboveground elements wilt and even blacken, however you don’t wish to let a tough freeze flip your underground harvest into mush.

When you’ve by no means tried the annual fall apply of storing bulbs, this information can present you the widespread steps and plant-specific tweaks that can get your colourful bulb financial institution socked away for future enjoyment.

Overview

There are 5 fundamental steps to observe to retailer tender summer season bulbs over the winter.

1. Looking forward to foliage die-back.
2. Digging up and letting them dry or “treatment.”
3. Dusting off the filth and inserting them in a correct storage materials.
4. Holding them in a cool, darkish, and dry place.
5. Checking on them as soon as a month or so to watch for over-drying or rot.

Key Particulars

• When curing, set bulbs on a cardboard lid or paper-lined tray.
• When storing, do NOT let bulbs contact. That is to keep away from spreading illness. If one bulb is rotting, it will probably infect the others.
• In case your bulbs are shriveling and in a storage medium like cedar chips, this implies the bedding is just too dry. Utilizing a twig bottle, you’ll be able to frivolously mist the medium with water.
• Be light if you dig out bulbs. If utilizing a shovel or spade, dig across the exterior fringe of the place you suppose the roots are, then loosen and elevate the clump out together with your palms. In case you have a hand rake, that’s even higher — you’ll have the ability to get a bit nearer to the bulbs, however you continue to want to maneuver gently to keep away from scratching them.
• Every of the seven, standard summer season bulbs listed right here wants related care, although some are fussier than others or do finest when saved in a selected manner. As you apply storing bulbs, you’ll possible develop your individual methods of efficiently getting them by way of the chilly months relying in your local weather. Listed here are some tips to get you began.
• In contrast to seeds, which could be sprightly growers even after a pair years of storage, summer season bulbs will die if they aren’t replanted within the spring.

Storage Ideas

Right here’s methods to retailer several types of tender bulbs.

Gladiolus

These exuberant flowers, with their tall stem of alternating buds, are a delight to the eyes on the top of a steamy summer season. Fortunately, they’re fairly easygoing in relation to storage, although you have to to treatment their corms a bit longer than different tender bulbs.

1. Wait for his or her foliage to blacken after a frost.
2. Dig up the clusters of corms, then dry within the solar for 2 days.
3. Utilizing pruners, in the reduction of the foliage to 2 inches, brush off clinging soil, then lay the corms on a cardboard lid or paper-lined tray. Let the corms dry out for an additional three weeks out of direct solar in a heat, 60-70 diploma F setting.
4. Take away the shriveled “mom” corm and toss. Snap off the tiny child corms (cormels) — you’ll be able to plant these individually from the bigger ones within the spring, however it’ll take a number of years for them to develop giant sufficient to bear blooms.
5. Change the paper on the tray or put the corms in a brand new cardboard lid and retailer in a dry, darkish space at a temperature between 35-45 levels F.

Canna Lily

A subtropical decorative, the canna lily is just not a real lily, however is definitely associated to banana and ginger crops. For cooler temperate zones, it’s a deal with to have this unique flower blooming within the sizzling months. Storage prep strategies for canna rhizomes are just like gladiolus corms, however they require a cozier kind of bedding.

1. When the leaves blacken from an in a single day frost or laborious freeze, dig up the rhizomes.
2. In the reduction of the foliage to 6 inches and set the rhizomes out to dry for 2 days.
3. Frivolously rub the dried soil off the rhizomes.
4. Put a one-inch layer of cedar chips within the backside of a bin. Layer the canna on prime in order that the rhizomes don’t contact. Cowl with one other layer of cedar chips and repeat as wanted.
5. High the container loosely with a lid, however don’t seal, as a bit air flow will assist maintain all the things dry.
6. Retailer the bin in a cool, dry place corresponding to a basement, with a basic temperature of between 45-50 levels F.

Calla Lily

No, this isn’t a real lily both, however a member of the genus Zantedeschia. Native to South Africa, calla lilies are available in quite a lot of putting colours and add a contemporary magnificence to potted and reduce floral preparations. What appears like their flower petal is definitely a modified leaf that wraps across the middle, the place a spadix incorporates the precise tiny flowers. Like gladiolas, they develop from corms, and love a sizzling, sunny day.

1. After frost blackens the foliage, delicately take away the rhizomes.
2. Dry the bulbs for 3 weeks in a heat location, then take away the previous stems and dirt off any soil.
3. Retailer in a cardboard field or a paper bag between layers of barely moist peat moss or vermiculite, and ensure that not one of the rhizomes are touching.
4. Hold in a cool, dry place at 45-55 levels F.

Chincherinchee

Not a lily or a Mary Poppins tune, Chincherinchee is a bulb from the Hyacinthaceae household and one other South African native. Additionally known as Star of Bethlehem, this decorative can last as long as six weeks as a reduce flower in a vase.

1. Following the primary frost, trim blackened, useless leaves to 2 inches.
2. Dry the bulbs for 3 weeks in a heat, room-temperature setting.
3. Retailer in a darkish, cool space on a paper-lined tray or open crate at 45-55 levels F.

Tuberous Begonia

Beguiling begonias lend bursts of colour to shady and light-filtered areas, their flower petals glinting as if stuffed with sparkles. The tender-stemmed crops have to be taken out of the backyard a few month into autumn or earlier than the primary frost.

1. In September, give your begonias a lowering quantity of water and cease fertilizer therapies so they are going to begin the hardening course of.
2. After the foliage turns yellow, the stems will loosen and fall off.
3. Very fastidiously dig up the tubers.
4. Let the tubers dry in a sunny spot for 2 weeks.
5. Place tubers in a perforated plastic bin or bag, fastidiously bedding them between layers of peat moss or vermiculite.
6. Retailer in a darkish, cool place at 45-55 levels F.

Elephant Ear

Boldly tropical, elephant ear makes a giant assertion in any backyard. Their large corms are delicate to chilly. Whereas it cues them to go dormant, too deep of a freeze can result in corm rot, so that you’ll wish to keep watch over the out of doors thermometer and what the elephant ear’s leaves are telling you.

1. As quickly because the tops die again after the primary frost, dig the corms out of the soil. Put on gloves earlier than dealing with elephant ear — the sap within the roots could be irritating to pores and skin.
2. In the reduction of the foliage to a few inches.
3. Set the corms out to dry within the solar for 3 days.
4. Brush off any remaining soil from the corms and clip off the small roots rising on them.
5. Retailer at 40-60 levels F between two-inch layers of peat moss or pine shavings in a cardboard field.

Dahlia

There’s been a renewed curiosity in dahlias in recent times, with their wildly variable colour mixtures starring in marriage ceremony bouquets, house magazines, and cottage gardens. The tidily shaped, multi-petaled blooms nearly look unreal of their perfection. Saving their tubers for winter requires a bit extra vigilance.

1. Wait for 2 laborious frosts (in a single day freezing temperatures) earlier than you dig them out. When the primary frost blackens the leaves, reduce the stems again to 6 inches. After the second laborious frost, dig them out.
2. Rinse the tubers and pat dry with a kitchen towel. 
3. Give the tubers a bit trim: snip again the stems to an inch and reduce off the hairlike roots.
4. Allow them to dry for twenty-four hours.
5. Pack the tubers in giant plastic bins stuffed with cedar chips or peat moss. Cowl their lids loosely to permit air to enter and to keep away from an excessive amount of humidity forming, which invitations rot and illness. 
6. Retailer in a darkish, cool spot, round 40-50 levels F

Continuously Requested Questions