Gladiolus patch

These Glads I am keeping colors separate. Some are new I am increasing.
Bernie

Left side.

Oh, my, lots of glads.
Are you growing them for cut flowers?
They sure will look pretty soon.
Carol

Man that is a lot of glads. I love them in a vase. I have about 40 planted but you have hundreds. Do you raise them for resale in your are? What colors do you have? Have you heard of the star wars glad? I am really wanting to find some and have not had much luck.

We grow them for cut flowers. A great mixture of colors, all are mixed up, so we have a bunch of colors all summer. There are somewhere between 25,000 & 30,000 plants.
We don't sell any blubs.
Bernie

First open bloom of the season.
This one is called Priscilla.
Bernie

Silly question for you.....what do you do when they are finished blooming. Should they be left in the ground until the leaves die back and then be dug for next year? Mine are all finished and now I don't know what's next.

Robin, you need to leave the leaves up for putting the food back into the bulbs for next year.
I can't believe that you are almost done and mine still don't even have a bloom on them yet!
Carol

OK. So I'll let the leaves happily photosynthesize for a while. I'm guessing the leaves will die back sometime and then I dig them. Is that right?

Carol...you are right. It does seem early. But they are bloomed and done. I actually planted a fresh batch of bulbs for a later show. I have heard that the old timers around here used to plant bulbs weekly so they had flowers all summer.

Country Gardens,

Since you raise glads big-time, I have a question. Some years I find my later blooms of glads get some kind of blight in the flowering stalk that causes the bloom to not open up well....just ruins it. Do you know what to do to revent this?

You probably have thrips, a tiny bug that eats the petals before they open. Once this gets severe they will not open at all. We treat our bulbs when we store them & any new bulbs we buy we treat before we plant them. Then we spray once a week starting when the first spikes show. Use a chemical that is labeled for thrips. We made it this year with only one little patch having a probelm.
As of today we have cut 5449 stems to sell. Most have sold. Probably another 1000 that were not fit for sale, crooked, to small, bad petals, etc.
We will be ordering 500 bulbs of each of 16 new colors for 2006 season. Plus our own bulbs will be increased by 40%. Bulbets getting big enough to bloom & old bulbs making 2 or 3 new ones each. We plan on doing a better job of marketing next year also.
Bernie

Thanks, Bernie.

I have about 250 bulbs these days. They have increased yearly. Certain colors dominate....like a large ruffled pink and a large ruffled white. Also a pretty pink/lavender with yellow.

Anyway, I do treat the bulbs in the fall and have used Sevin for thrips...works good early. Sometimes all summer, but not for the late planted ones this year.

Robin, I think most glads should be winter hardy for you. Here in zone 6 I had them 3 years in a row before I moved. Neal.

Robin, I left mine in the ground in Asheville. Did fine.

That is good to know. I seem to have a vague memory of my grandma planting gladiolas every spring in straight lines along with her vegetables in the garden. So, I thought they must not be hardy or she wouldn't have replanted them every year. Excellent...one less thing to prep for winter! Thanks for the advice!

Robin

Is there any other alternative to spraying weekly for thrips? All my patches of gladiolus are infested, along with all the other plants that are in the iridaceae family - Acidantera bicolor and schizostylis coccinea. I don't dig up any of the corms so I can't dust them. Spraying weekly would be a lot of work and I would prefer to keep the chemical use down. Maybe I will just have to give up on them, though I love my glads during the first 2-3 years before being attacked by the thrips.

Dianne