hampartsum said:Perhaps receiving them mid July, placing them in pots inside my warm greenhouse until ready to go out in mid October, keeping them in bags the first readjustment season and let them finish off near to normal outside. Finally place bulbs in ground late fall. Hopefully let them multiply naturally.
I think this is a good plan. Probably, some lilies might stay green all the way until your natural fall, while others will die back much earlier. Not to worry. Some of this is due to the type of lily - trumpets and orientpets naturally tend to hold their green stems longer. You might find that some of the lilies that died back early start to grow in the fall, especially from young stem bulblets that grew as new bulbs that formed that growing season. Not to worry about this, either ((and there is nothing you can do about it, anyway). The young bulblets will grow again the following spring. If the mother bulb grows in fall, it might too, but I think more likely it will just skip growing the following summer season while it finishes its transition to the southern hemisphere.
"Warm and dry, but not too dry" is a tricky thing to do, and as long as the bulbs don't receive the cold treatment they need to sprout normally, it's not such a big deal. If the soil, or wood shavings, or peat, or sand, or whatever media you have them in, is moist enough that the bulbs grow some new roots, but the amount of root growth is curtailed by the dryness - then that is probably the most ideal. No roots is fine, too, as long as the bulbs stay firm. I find that with fresh bulbs that I dig, if I shake off most all of the dirt, let it all get completely bone dry, then seal it up in a plastic bag, that seems to work well. The moisture from the hydrated bulbs will seep into the dry air and create a bit of humidity in the bag that will aid with preventing further dry out of the bulbs, yet not so much as to support fungal disease. When you periodically check on the bulbs, watch for any change in color of your media that would indicate a buildup of moisture. Condensation of water on the sides of the bag definitely indicates too much moisture.
