There you go mags, bragging about your roots lol. Yesterday I finally got around to planting my spring order and I don't think any of them had roots. Well they had dead roots, at a minimum. Somehow I don't expect a lot out of them this year.

I bought 5 cheap Dizzies from Scheepers and they are up, growing in a container. They may not last till next year if it gets real hot. But then, as I said, they were cheap. I look forward to enjoying them.

magnolialover said:I pulled my bags of stored oriental lily bulbs out today. About 100 of them. I was afraid to even look because I am late pulling them out.
But look at these happy roots!

Wow!

I'm very happy with your achievement. How did you store them? in bags in a dark cool basement? Plastic bags with holes to maintain some ventilation inside peat or other inert substrate, barely moist? This is the way I store my dahlias. With the latter i use wood shavings that have powdered sulphur added to prevent rot. I wonder if it will work for Liliums as well.
I'm asking since I'm about to move around a clump that has been growing there for at least 12 years and needs dividing. I plan to replant some, and others next spring ( late september here) in some new location that I haven't decided yet.

Arturo

Arturo, I store them after removing from pots on my deck in the fall. Last year I placed in dampened peat moss (just damp as too wet can cause rot) in plastic grocery bags, where I tied the top of the bag, so technically there is a hole, just at the top.1-2 pots worth of bulbs on one bag (10-12). I then placed them all in a plastic Rubbermaid type tote. This tote was chock full of seedlings and these bulbs from the pots on my deck. They seem to like to be all nestled in tightly. I have far better growth and less loss this way. They are stored in the very back of an attached garage where they remain until April or so. That garage gets mighty cold in the winter at times and yet they seem to do okay.

Tracey, Thank you so much for your explanation! Does it freeze inside your garage in winter? Some types of bulbs can withstand dry frosted condition undamaged. I was trying to understand what 'mighty cold', means inside in your place. Outside I know for sure how cold it can get... ...Im already shivering by the mere thought! brrr.

Arturo

Arturo, I would say in the 10 degrees F or so, maybe less, depending on the winter. As the outside temperature is not stable and fluctuates, so does the attached garage temp. Warmer though than an outbuilding, not attached to the house.

I hope that helps.

Thank you Tracey, that clearly indicates that lily bulbs withstand frost! Very good to know. My dahlias only can be kept in a cold above freezing dark place. My cold season will barely drop to 28ºF/30ºF inside an attached area in my main building. I guess the lilies won't mind that at all.

Arturo

Tucked in that peat moss here makes the difference. The ample moss mist provide some protection, insulation.

So looking at the pic you showed, Tracey, how much of those roots were from last season in the pot?

With no insulation around the tote, I think you estimation of "about 10°F, maybe less" is spot on.

The attached garage moderates the temperature much better than an unattached shed. On a sunny day in mid winter here, inside the shed can get to 30 degrees warmer than outside, but drops temperature much faster at night. I once tried to overwinter some of my alpines in a 12x12ft shed (no windows), and things grew in February. By spring, most everything died, because the temperature fluctuation was just too large, even for mountain plants.

Rick, they actually do worse in pots over the summer than they do bagged in damp peat over the winter rest period. Typically I have a lot of stem roots and not as many basal roots from summer growth in the deck pots.

Took pics of a bee on my Hyacinths

Ahhh....Spring !
Good hearing from you Anthony.
Your picture is the perfect image of what Spring represents to us all.

Today I visited a fellow alpine rock gardener. She is moving out of her house of 45+ years, and she has already given me miscellaneous books and what not. She told me she had more "stuff" for me, and pretty much I just come over and take it, just so she can be rid of it. Then I distribute it, keep it, or maybe even just throw it away.

She is the rock gardener, and her late husband was a conifer and orchid enthusiast, and he grew some nice lilies, too. In fact her husband was the one who, 20 years, ago gave me the lilies that are the source of my donation to the NALS auction this year. So this being the perfect time, I asked about possibly salvaging some of his old stalwarts.

I found three nice ones. The martagon lily called Mahogany:


Lilium henryi:


Lilium leichtlinii var. maximowiczii (hort.):


I guess I will see next year if that's what they really are.

There was another I wondered about, White Butterflies. Another really old one bred y Judith F., I believe. I remember seeing it bloom and it was nice, but I didn't notice anything special or particularly useful in breeding. Any comments on this one?

That henryi bulb...

Rick
Thanks for sharing those gardener's story.
The take-away: Share what you've learned; Share what you have.
We sure can't take it with us.

Spent the weekend attempting to get some projects done. Project one, digging up old raised bed that had several empty spots due to failure or a critter. Tough to know for sure which but consolidated seedlings to one half and then planted some new seedlings. Some of the bulbs dug were decent size! It was amazing to think each of these all started with a seed.

Nice looking bulbs there. That big one is almost black!

With the relocation, I may loose track of what came from where, but most of what I have in there has been around long enough to have a good idea. That dark bulb I think is an Angel Gabriel x Sinfonia bulb.

It has been terribly dry this year. It was like processing concrete, digging through that bed. Today my knees are sore. They hate it when I do stuff like this.

The darkest bulb I have ever seen. It must taste horrible!

I'm interested in the top lily in the first pic, with the stubby seed pods...
-- It must either be L. henryi or have it heavily in its parentage, I would think?

Which brings up another thing going in the background in my lily life:
Some of you may remember me posting this on the Yahoo lily group a year plus ago. I had purchased a supposed L. longiflorum x L. henryi.



Everyone said it was just L. henryi. One responded that he had purchased the same bulb, too, and his flower was white. Well, anyway, it can't be just be L. henryi because it has long seed pods. Seems to be fertile as a pod parent, but not so much as a pollen parent.

Tracey, nice looking bulb. I had one with similar color last year. You're already digging bulbs? I am jealous haha. Here I need to wait at least one more months. They are still all green. Maybe the seedlings will be ready sooner. Extracting bulbs is very interesting to me. I always like to see how much they have grown.

The lilium you see hanging over the cleaned up bed is a Louis XIV x Betty Sturley. Lots of henryi looking seedlings, just one bicolor. None in the form of Louis. I was hoping for a Betty Sturley look on a Louis form. It never happened. I fed a lot of those bulbs to the cows down the road.

As for digging time, we have not had a frost yet, so technically, I pulled them green. Although not optimal, important to know time is limited here when you have a mountain of work to complete by end of season.. before snow flies. Between work and volunteering, time is limited so I must "have at it" when I can.

Rick, L. longiflorum x L. henryi is likely correct there. I bought one a few years ago from the Lily Nook and it looked very much like henryi. I felt there were subtle differences from L. henryi. And it didn't last long here, even in a raised bed. Yours seems to be thriving. It will be interesting to see what the next generation looks like there.