Tiny bulbs
Mary Sue Ittner (Mon, 16 Feb 2004 10:03:34 PST)

Dear Trough Growers,

I don't have a trough and haven't tried to grow anything in one. After
hearing a woman with hot summers say she had to water hers every day,
sometimes more often I lost interest. Perhaps this is a dumb question and I
expect I'll be flooded with references to reading about troughs. If you
were picking tiny bulbs to go in a trough for year round interest, wouldn't
they have to be bulbs or corms that would be happy with wet conditions both
in winter and summer? I know on this list a lot of people have reported
successes with bulbs that are supposed to be kept dry during dormancy and
weren't. Presumably the other plant roots would be sucking up the moisture
too and I assume the mix would have a lot of air in it as well. Normally a
lot of California bulbs are recommended for a dry dormancy. And I lost all
the rhodohypoxis I left out to be rained on in winter, but they come back
fine kept semi-dry. Delphinium nudicaule and Delphinum luteum both come
back in containers with other plants watered year round however, but I
suppose their leaves might be a bit robust and their tendency to reseed
could be a problem too.

Mary Sue