Snowdrops

I want to give my elderly mother some flowering snowdrops for xmas. Bulbs bought and in the fridge (didn't have the space to plant and put the pot in the fridge - and to late to get in the green).

Planning to plant them next week - could this be about the righ time.

[ 26. October 2005, 09:17 PM: Message edited by: Fran ]

 

Hi Fran

They are on sale now at the local Wilko's along with blubells, so I would think now is fine

 

Thanks Steve - will plant next week and keep my fingers crossed.

 

When I moved into my present abode six years ago, I inherited a front garden that was packed with snowdrops. I dug up most of them, ending up with a quantity amounting to two of those big black garden buckets full!

Not wanting to throw any away, I've planted them around the garden and I've planted them in spring, summer and autumn, in wet and dry, clay and loam! They all come up!

I also read somewhere that you have to be 'careful' how you store them! Well, when I dug these up I was totally ignorant of all that and just left them in the shed in a cardboard tray for months and months!

I still have another perimeter bed which is crammed full of the bulbs, so many they keep coming to the surface but they still grow and bloom, even though they're only on top of the soil!

Doesn't seem to me that anything much stops these little gems!

 

Good to hear - I love them, and so does my mum - the container planted ones from last winter are now in the her tiny garden - but I would like her to enjoy some at xmas.

 

Sometimes in Australia you can wander along a back creek somewhere out bush and come upon the most amazing sight - sudden squares of snow drops. Settlers had come out, brought out their snowdrop bulbs, and planted them in their little gardens as a reminder of home. Their ramshackle huts have long gone, but the snow drops continue to bloom. They can survive most anything, even the Australian droughts.

 

Ooooh! That had me almost choked up! The thought of all those homesick Brits planting their little bulbs and they're still there hundreds(?) of years on ....

 

I planted over 100 in Autumn 2003. Got a great show in spring 2004. Nothing in Spring 2005.

I don't know why.

 

Sounds like they flowered off the bulb the first year, but weren't able to rebuild that bulb after flowering. Maybe after two years, they will have built up enough to flower in 2006 if the conditions are right.