Freesia laxa

clayton3120 clayton3120 clayton3120@cablespeed.com
Tue, 28 May 2013 17:55:36 PDT
It's good I was sitting down when I read this about the blue Freesia laxa.
  Most of mine are blue , and they seed in all the surrounding pots. I
assumed this was a common, weedy form.  I never gave it a second thought
that it might be difficult.
Let me see what I have, I'd gladly donate it to the BX.
Rick K


On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 2:49 PM, Gastil Gastil-Buhl
<gastil.buhl@gmail.com>wrote:

> Mary Sue wrote:
> "None of the seeds germinated for me. It's strange
> that this plant from a summer rainfall area blooms for her in winter
> (January)."
>
> The pale blue Freesia laxa I grow are all from a single parent plant which
> I got in the 1990s from UCSB, who got it from UCI.
>
> Because these grow so easily for me, I have not done germination tests nor
> kept much of a record of how I grow them. Until I learned about the PBS BX,
> I used to toss the seeds into whatever pot of succulents was within reach.
> I only noticed when they grew. I do not know what germination rate to
> expect. I sow them very shallow or even just toss them on the soil surface.
>
> This past year Ive grown these in their own pots, on a wire shelf under an
> arbor of vines, protected from frost. Their indicator plants are self-sown
> Impatiens that dry out much faster than anything else on that shelf so
> these pots get a lot more frequent watering than my other bulbs. Their soil
> is nothing special, just half bagged mix and half sand and pumice, roughly.
> I crowd them way too much in the pots.
>
> I set the terra-cotta pots on a wire shelf and let their leaves grow up
> thru the wire shelf above them as a support. Otherwise the floppy leaves
> just fall over the edge of the pot. They seem to like having their lower
> stems more open in the air like this. I got twice as many seed pods this
> year as last year.
>
> The flowering period has varied. This year I had flowers from January
> through April, with a few stragglers either end. This is more than in past
> years. They are beginning to go dormant now but there are still a dozen
> green pods maturing. I have never attempted to put them on a particular
> growing cycle. When they sprout I water them. When they begin to turn brown
> I stop watering them. They also get chance water; I do not move the pots
> onto the dry storage shelves over the summer.
>
> - Gastil
>
>
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