Everyone who grows gladioli on their site may be faced with the fact that the plant bulbs have dried out. What to do about it and how to avoid it?
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Features of winter storage
Only healthy specimens are chosen for bookmarking for the winter. They must be dried well so that they do not start to rot.
You can store the bulbs in the basement, but if there are vegetables there, then gladioli require a compartment with separate ventilation. They are also kept suspended in old tights or in gauze bags. And when wintering in the refrigerator, it is better to put the bulbs in paper bags.
Preparing for landing
They begin to prepare planting material in mid-March.
- The bulbs are removed from a cold place and checked for defects. Sick gladioli throw away or cut off problem areas with a knife, and the cuts are treated with brilliant green.
- At the end of April, the bulbs are placed in a solution with boric acid, zinc, potassium permanganate, magnesium sulfate and molybdenum for half a day. After that, they are dried. You can plant it when the ground warms up above 10⁰C.
How to deal with dried onions
If the gladiolus bulbs are dry, then you should not immediately throw them out, you can try to cure them. But there is a chance to save only those of them on which small new shoots have formed. You can see whether the bulb is alive or not by removing the upper scales. If gladioli are subject to resuscitation, then they are treated with a weak solution of potassium permanganate or placed in a 3% solution of hydrogen peroxide, and then dried.
There is one more method:
- The bulbs are cleaned of dried flakes.
- Dry river sand is poured into any suitable container.
- The bulbs are laid out with the bottom down and watered abundantly with a pink solution of potassium permanganate.
- When the sand starts to dry out, it needs to be watered. If the bulbs survived, then they should give roots, and after that they can already be planted in the soil.
There is another rescue method suitable for those bulbs that are sick with thrips. It is necessary:
- Treat them with insecticides.
- Dry.
- Wrap individually in paper such as newspaper.
- Put in a paper bag and send to the bottom shelf of the refrigerator. After a while, see if they survived or not.
Gladioli bulbs can dry out not only from diseases, but also from improper storage. In this case, they must be soaked in a soda solution before planting (a teaspoon of soda per liter of water). In addition to water and soda, a solution with trace elements is also suitable.
All these methods will help to save the planting material from drying out and grow excellent flowers from it.
Do you know how to properly prepare gladiolus bulbs for planting?
Original articleand many other materials, you can find on ourwebsite.
Read about harvesting and storing gladiolus bulbs in the following article:Gladioli - harvesting and storing bulbs before planting