moving the bulb collection

Linda Foulis lmf@beautifulblooms.ab.ca
Sun, 31 May 2009 09:30:01 PDT
Hi all,
Not sure how to specifically title this one as it will cover my entire collection.

End of March I had unpotted everything in preparation for my move.  Some of the bulbs were sifted out of the mix and bagged
carefully, specifically the oxalis collection.  Albuca, Rhodophiala, Ferraria, Cyrtanthus, Hippeastrum (only the tiny ones),
Cooperia, and Cyclamen were all dumped into ziploc bags, mix and bulb together.  The large Hippeastrum were all unpotted and placed
in paper bags.  The Clivia and Veltheimia were both unpotted, roots wrapped in newspaper, moistened, bagged (roots only) and boxed.

I had many doubts that this would work but also felt limited in my choices.  I wasn't sure when they could be all repotted and
moving them in pots was out of the question.  I'm very happy to say that after a week of repotting, there were very few casualties,
and funny enough, it was all in the oxalis collection.  The ones that I took the most care of.  Go figure?
Easy enough to replace through the BX though.

While repotting I took a lot of care in counting, cataloguing and taking notes of growth habits.  There were two things that struck
me as odd.  One the Cyrtanthus bulbs are clumping up and making new ones over increasing in size.  Not sure if I'm describing this
correctly or not.  Where there was one bulb there are now many circling the original.  Is this the normal habit of Cyrtanthus?
Another I found odd was the Rhodophiala.  All of them (granatiflora, phycelloides, advena, laeta, and bagnoldii) are all stretched
out.  Would this be an example of the bulb wanting to be planted at a greater depth?  Most of these are in their 2nd to 3rd year,
all were at the bottom of 5" deep pot when unpotted.  The bulbs are still small, would planting them in a larger, deeper pot help
them along?  I put them back in the same size pot as they were, near the bottom, just so that they were potted again, but should I
repot them?

It's wonderful to see how quickly everything is responding now that they are back in pots and in the sun.  This new house has loads
of windows and is very bright and sunny, a real treat compared to the last house where all had to be grown in the basement under
lights.

Linda Foulis
Red Deer, AB Canada
Zone 3

Another hot sunny day, and I'll spend a good part of today digging up more sod and maybe, just maybe by day end I'll be ready to put
in the vegetable seeds.


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