holding corms
Rodger Whitlock (Mon, 03 Sep 2012 10:58:11 PDT)

On 2 Sep 2012, at 22:06, Richard wrote:

Too warm, and the wood shavings may harbor fungi and encourage rotting.

Pot them up and park the pots in a cold frame for the winter. Do it now. Water
once, and let it go at that. In fact, having lost F. pudica myself more than
once, I'd say to pot it in barely damp soil and give it no water at all until
you see leaves. It's very close to being a snowmelt plant that compresses its
entire life cycle into a few short weeks in spring and is dormant the rest of
the year.

F. affinis can withstand considerable summer drought. F. camschatensis prefers
damper conditions.

If you don't have a cold frame, just parking the pots under the eaves where the
rain can't get at them may suffice.

If you are apartment bound so pots are out of the question, store the bulbs in
clean washed sand, nearly dry for F. pudica, dampish for F. affinis, slightly
damper for F. camschatensis and keep them in the refrigerator. This is why God
invented Ziploc bags.

In general frits are delicately sensitive to summer moisture levels. Too much
and they'll rot, too little and the bulbs will shrivel. The late Molly Grothaus
down in the Portland area used to grow her frit collection in upended flue
tiles near a cherry tree that gave light summer shade. When she lifted the
bulbs in summer, if they were shrivelled, she'd move them a little close to the
tree where they'd get more shade. Each species had its own preference.

--
Rodger Whitlock
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Z. 7-8, cool Mediterranean climate