On May 3, 2007, at 6:33 PM, Paul Tyerman wrote: > Howdy All, > > I need some brain-picking of experience please? What is the best > time to try to change hemisphere for bulbs and corms? I know plenty of others have experience with this too. But as a general rule of thumb, the conversions that have worked the best for me are when I get a bulb as soon after it enters dormancy in the opposite hemisphere as possible, and then try to grow it as long as is feasible in what is left of its normal growing conditions in my hemisphere. I have tried to hold dormant bulbs over an extra 6 months, but very few bulbs seem to like that. They shrivel and sometimes disappear before the proper growing season begins in my hemisphere, especially if they are very small bulbs, which is often the case. Now if I can't get them early enough after dormancy I just wait another year. That being said, I've found that the most difficult type to convert hemispheres are the winter growers. Summer growers are easier to convert because it's much easier to continue providing them the warmer conditions they want on into our late autumn and early winter than it is to continue providing cool growing conditions after spring has ended and summer here has begun. I have often thought about begging friends who lives along the coast here (where they have much cooler conditions even into the summer) to let me finish growing them at their house. But then I know they won't take care of them properly, etc. Now if you live along coastal northern California or in the coolest of the San Francisco Bay Area climates, you can probably grow them in cool conditions for an extended period after receiving them. Same holds for the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia. If you have friends in Anchorage, Alaska, that would probably be a perfect place to try converting winter growers. Our only saving grace in So. Calif. is that we get May Gray and June Gloom which makes our early summers generally much cooler than what the U.S. Southern states experience. But many of the summer dormant species don't do well there anyway because it is so humid and wet during their summers. Western and Northern Europe probably have a similarly easier go of it. --Lee Poulsen Pasadena, California, USA, USDA Zone 10a