I receive a catalogue from Great Western Gladiolus today. They include an Important notice.
All corms should be prepared before planting as many will still be dormant when received. The process is similar to chitting potatoes. Peel the outside skin from the corms and stand them somewhere light and warm indoors, e.g. a sunny windowsill. Do not stand them in sand, peat or soil After a week or two, one or more shoots will emerge around the edge of the basal plate on the bottom of the corm. The corm has now broken dormancy and will grow away successfully. Plant on a handful of sharp sand three times the depth of the corm. Planting dormant, unpeeled corms may lead to poor, late, or no growth, as will repeated plantings on the same ground.
Does anyone do this? I didn't know about it, that could be one reason some gladiolus sometimes don't do well. The bigger corms I have seen don't usually have much outer skin on them, but smaller ones do.
The planting depth is on the shallow side according to how some people plant them, the advantages of deep planting being stability. I wonder if the depth makes a big difference to how the bulb grows in different climates too.
It would be interesting to hear others experiences on this, and to compare climates with planting depth.
Chitting Gladiolus corms
Where do they come up with all this nonsense ?
Plant the things, They will grow, they want to grow, grow, grow!
The same thing over in veggies. Strange ways of growing things that would grow just as well if you just plant it.
People always ask how I got such a green thumb. Don't have one, put seeds or bulbs in the ground, water & sun & they will grow. Some of this winter sowing & such makes me laugh. Take a break, thats what winter is for. The sun will shine, the rain will come, the ground will warm up & things will grow.
Of course it don't make for much discussion.
Bernie
Good to hear your down to earth views on this Bernie. I agree with you, I wasn't sure what the information was really about, whether they give this just in case some don't grow and can say did you do this or that. They do grow gladiolus themselves as well as import some, and unlike some provide a telephone number and encourage anyone to talk to them if they wish to know or provide information. Perhaps they have found it works best for them.
I think the advice to plant on different ground may be to avoid disease. I wondered if the skins may also harbour disease.
I think a green thumb is just from experience and an instinct of when to put seeds in for your own area. Our growing season is quite short, the differences can be seen from the north to south of the country of when to sow seeds, they can often be sown a month earlier in the south. Veggies are different to some seeds which need winter cold to help germination, the only veggie I know, apart from garlic, that needs winter sowing here to do well is leeks grown for exhibition.
It would be interesting to try the chitting method for gladiolus, and plant some unchitted of the same variety in the same area to see if there is a difference.
Different times I have planted seeds & started plants of the same variety, on the same date side by side. Usually they will have usable fruit at the same time, sometimes seeded ones are first!
Bernie
Yes I have found that too, there seems to be a time for maturity with some plants no matter when sown. From seed grown I think the plant gets established better from the start, and hasn't got to struggle to get it's roots in and adjust.
CountryGardens - that is great! I just garden, and hope for the best, but then read all this stuff and get worried about doing it right. Of course, my garden/landscape doesn't look like anything in books, but it makes me happy.
I admit to being an impatient seed starter, however. One of those watching constantly for the sprouts!
My major concern about the glads will be water. It's extremely dry and hot here in the summer, and I know I don't want a double water bill for flowers. Hopefully, I'll get some assistance to figure out the irrigation that should be available, but suffered damage from last winter's storms, so was unreliable this last year.
If you are going to experiment, Wallaby, you'll have to take into consideration temperature. A window sill is much warmer than the ground. I can't say exactly how much validity this has here, but remember our high school chemistry? Chemical reaction rate doubles with 10 degrees F (4 C) - or something like that.
I think I will put the chitting in the same category as starting seed on moist paper towels. It may work, but I don't see the point. Just like planting germinated seed, where you risk damaging the growing radicle (or at least the swelling seed), peeling of the protective skin on glads, can't be helpful when you plant them in soil.
The sprouts break easily, then they are done. We had that problem one of the first years we grew them. We had stored them to warm, so lots were sprouted. Some broke off, others, we didn't know how to plant them, so we left a little of the sprout uncovered. They all grew about the same. Glads seem to shoot their stalk & flower before many roots form, so there's not much advantage to pre-sprouting them.
Bernie
I searched for any info on chitting, the Feb. flowers section on the RHS site mentions this
"Place gladioli corms in seed trays or boxes and place in a light, warm (around 10ºC/50ºF) spot to encourage them to sprout before planting. This will ensure an earlier display."
I do chit potatoes for the same reason, it can give them a head start but I have grown them without and they do grow, but if the season happens to be particularly cold as we can have here I can see the advantages.
If I plant corms in mid March and it turns cold as it always does it could sit there and rot. A chitted one has the growth already initiated and could help it to get away. We were having temps like winter last spring right until mid April, even then it wasn't great.
I don't really remember what the chemical reaction rates were Lefty! I don't do seeds in moist paper either, but have done crinum seeds that way successfully.
I seem to remember seeing somewhere about skinning tulip bulbs (not much skin there!), don't know about Gladiolus corms!
Bernie you are right about breaking them off, I imagine if growing a lot it would be much more difficult to be careful.
I did this with my tulips for hanging baskets. I read somewhere that the issue here is the roots being inhibited by the paper tunic. usually the tunic just falls away, but it sticks particularly well to the basal plate where the roots emerge. But I really don't know if removing it makes any difference because in my experience growing roots can be pretty darn forceful!
Some tulips do seem to have thicker skins, but as you say the roots are forceful. In nature they wouldn't get the skin removed, and with a summer baking I think they would make one in the ground for protection. They should also soften and disintegrate with winter wet.
Are yours dwarf species types pard?
No, they are big fat hybrids, double early to make a good show. I found that the varieties Monte Carlo and Abbas work good for baskets. they are short and will make something akin to a mound in the baskets. I also made up a few baskets of dwarf narcissi but don't recall which kind I picked out. I store these under the eaves for the winter or they would get too wet.
I managed to get some more Monte Carlo this year, I have a single one in the garden which flowered last spring after a few years of bulb building, the rest disappeared. A strong honey scent, and long lasting, can't beat it.
To people who buy dormant amaryllis bulbs where I work, I always recommend that they remove all of the dead roots at the base of the bulb. This is so moisture will be in contact with the basal plate, and the idea is that roots will initiate or grow, quicker. That this concept could not be true with other bulbs is ludicrous.