Zantedeschia

I raised a few Z. jucunda from seeds, and will try some of them outdoors
near the greenhouse once they have made some offsets. I got several Z.
pentlandii corms or tubers several years ago, and I paid a ridiculously
high price for them! The first of these is blooming right now, and it is a
lovely, large, well opened thing, golden yellow. I think they are now
producing Z. pentlandii by tissue culture, so the commercial ones are
probably all just a single clone.

I have Z. albomaculata ex hort and ex seeds collected by Rod and Rachel
Saunders. The wild collected seedling has a better flower than the garden
plants. I'm lacking Z. rehmannii; I think I left a tray of seedlings
outdoors too late one autumn. Anyone have seeds of Z. rehmannii?

I think I should try some of the garden Z. albomaculata outdoors next spring.

Since there are so many Zantedeschia cultivars available now, and they are
beginning to be somewhat less expensive, we ought to just buy masses of
them, plant everything in the garden, and a few years later lift and trade
the survivors. Maybe I'll remember that early next spring.....

I should have small offsets of Z. pentlandii to trade this autumn. I may
have one or two offsets of Z. jucunda then too. Let's trade!

Jim Shields

At 12:57 PM 6/17/2006 -0500, you wrote:

On Sat, 17 Jun 2006, J.E. Shields wrote:

I would like to hear from folks who can grow Zantedeschia outdoors in the
ground all year round in USDA zones 7 or colder. I'm convinced that there
are out there somewhere some truly hardy Zantedeschia for zone 5, but I
just have not come across them yet! Who has them?

Jim, I've probably worn this topic out (or maybe that was on another
list), but
I'm in NW Arkansas, nominally USDA zone 6, but with winters ranging from 5 to
7 (last several were 7s, nothing below about 5 F/-15 C).

I grow all my Zantedeschias, with 3 exceptions below, outdoors all year, no
protection. Several, including "Flame" and a small-flowered cultivar which
clearly has a lot of Z. rehmanii in it, have been out there for at least 15
years, which includes the odd -20 F/-29 C night. Some of the newer ones,
including "Black Pearl" which went in last year, haven't been through a hard
winter yet, but broke dormancy at about the same time as the older ones.

I'm doing what you did, plenty of water in summer and none besides what nature
provides in winter. Whatever I'm doing right, it's not calculated. I'll be
glad
to compare growing conditions, or send you some offsets of the long-term
survivors here, or seeds in late summer.

The exceptions: I can't grow Z. aethiopica outdoors at all, even though it's
supposed to be the hardiest, due to the wildly fluctuating spring
temperatures
here. And I recently acquired two species zants from S. Africa which are
unknowns, so I won't risk them outdoors until I have enough to lose a few.

Steve

-- Steve Marak
-- samarak@gizmoworks.com
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Jim Shields USDA Zone 5 Shields Gardens, Ltd.
P.O. Box 92 WWW: http://www.shieldsgardens.com/
Westfield, Indiana 46074, USA
Tel. ++1-317-867-3344 or toll-free 1-866-449-3344 in USA