Rodger wrote >In your shoes, I'd lift them all [colchicums] and pot them in barely >damp soil. If your move >is anything like mine some 21 years ago, after you get into your new >place, you >will find so many things that need attention that your bulbs are likely to be >neglected for a season. In pots, they at least have a chance, as long as they >are protected from the rain and any hard freezes. I hope my move is a little different. The large species and hybrids of Colchicum, as well as the big daffodils, are all going into a narrow raised bed across most of the road frontage of the new garden, which a contractor with a truck and tractor is going to construct for me. I'm asking him to fill the bed to within a proper depth for planting these large bulbs (I have hundreds if not indeed thousands); then I'll set the bulbs in, and have him dump the remaining soil mix on top of them. I think I'll also add some Alstroemeria species for summer color, and perhaps some bearded iris species, and later I can plant a lot of Ceratostigma plumbaginoides, which rapidly makes a ground cover here and is lovely in fall with the colchicums. The bed will be bare only in the depth of winter -- when the weeds come up. Its retaining wall should keep the neighbors' cars off the rest of the front garden, which has been a problem for the tenants I've had in the house for a couple of years. Jane McGary Northwestern Oregon, USA