Lilies: Fine Gardening magazine growing tips, 1 by echoes

echoes wrote:
Reading my latest edition of my used to be favourite magazine. A nice article on Orienpets, lots of lovely pics. I said "YES" to myself when they said "Silk Road is indistinguishable from Northern Carillon".

But then, at the end of the article is a little section of growing tips.

-"Soak bulbs in a weak (5 percent) bleach solution." Uh huh, we do that with 10%. "This will kill any viruses that the bulb might be carrying." Scuse me, I don't buy that. Experts, your input please. - Input from JamesCo "Viruses, by their nature, inhabit the plant cells themselves. They swap the nucleus' DNA for RNA of the virus to proliferate." Thanks JamesCO, better wording than I could do.

- "Steep bulbs prior to planting for at least an hour in a water-soluable fertilizer bath." This also goes against a lot of information that I've read. How can the bulb use fertilizer now? You can kill some bulbs by fertilizing when they aren't yet growing.

- "Put an aspirin tablet in the bottom of each lily hole at planting time." No idea about this one. Input please.

- "Plant lily bulbs on their sides" (so they don't collect water and rot) ha ha Think they'll stay that way, or does it matter? No, of course they right themselves up.

Article was written by Woodruff Imberman

Sorry that non-subscribers can't read the rest of the thread. The small fee we pay for a bit more knowledge.




This message was edited Jun 29, 2006 10:13 AM

This message was edited Aug 6, 2006 2:24 PM