Gladioli

Can I grow Large flowered gladioli in a large pot. If so what size of pot and are they successful.

 

Yes, JD, your Gladioli will get on fine in a large pot.
The size of the pot depends on how many you want to put in there - just work out the spacing and see what size you need.
I got a great show from mine last year.

 

My wife did this one year. I'd bought a load of young plants and bulbs, and she pinched some to make her own container garden. This was quite a novelty for me because she doesn't usually take much interest.

She put a couple of gladioli bulbs in the centre of the container, then a couple of young ivy plants at the edge, and if I remember right she added a couple of marigolds too.

The whole thing looked pretty good at its peak, with the ivy trailing over the sides of the pot and the big glad spire in the middle.

The trouble is neither the wife nor I know how to look after glads, and the flowers only stayed for a few days.

 

I too would like to grow some Gladioli and I also do not know how. I used to know an old boy that greww hundreds of them and sold them at the gate in bunches. Every time I drove or rode past I would stop to have a look at these stunning flowers in great long rows. Fabulous sight to see and amazing colours.

Anyone know where I can find out how to grow them properly. I haven't been able to find any books that specialise in growing them.

I have the same problem learning about Fuschias.

Chopper.

 

I too would like to plant these,what time of year do you plant gladioli as I would like to plant loads of these bulbs in our community garden in our cut flower area .

Is there anywhere online I can send for these bulbs?

 

Plant the corms in the Spring - they are not frost hardy (but if they are still growing under ground they will be OK if there is a late frost).

They form a new corm on top of the old one (the old one will be shrivelled up), after the flower and foliage dies down, in the Autumn, then lift them and store (dry) over winter. Plant again in the Spring.

I think part of the "trick" is to cut flowers for the vase in such a way as to leave as much leaf as possible to build up the corm for next year. I use a long, thin, serrated knife that I can slide down between the leaves to cut the stem whilst doing as little damage to the leaves as possible - and I can then leave 4 leaves, or sometimes 6, and get a long enough stem for a vase.

 

Thanks everyone for your help.

 

There was someone like that on my allotment site. He'd grow around 30 poles of them, trenching, planting, backfilling with the soil from the next trench and leaving them in for 3 years, 2nd year just rotavating early in the season very shallow before the leaves were too high, same again in the 3rd & final year, always replacing one plot each year.

 

I'm surprised because in many years the cold, and probably more especially the damp, will kill them off. But in a mild winter, that is not too wet, you will get away with it. There is no need to do anything different to them in their third year - although, by then, there may be child-corms to harvest and divide off

 

The wife and I have always grown them easy enough, but one they flower, they only look good for a few days before the flowers finish. Is there a way to prolong their flowering, or is that just their nature?

 

I was told to take out the top couple of buds. Dunno if it really makes any difference though.

 

Yes, after only 2 winters (but 3 crops) too many had died for them to be worth bothering with any more and they were rotorvated through, but as they were being grown for cut flowers to sell, it wasn't worth digging up thousands of them every autumn and replanting them every spring.

 

Ah, OK, I'm with you now. I hadn't made the connection to the volume involved.

 

Named after the short Roman stabbing sword, the Gladius, leaves are the same shape.