I know gladiolas are corms, but...

My glads never went brown this year, the vegetation is still 95% green, some aren't even starting to turn brown.
My DH wants to cut them back anyway, I say leave 'em.

What do you brainy folks think, please?

I'm in z9 and my glads died back in Oct or so but our winter has been milder than usual and I have a lot of nice green growing. don't know what to do, waiting for those brainiacs to post here.

Very interesting that you have 95% green in z7

I would cut them back. The only reason why you leave the green leaves is for the food energy for the next year and I think they have gotten their food already by now.
I actually would have cut them back in November and mulched over them good.
But just my 2 cents worth.
Carol

I understand the reasoning behind leaving them, which is why I hesitate to cut -guess I always figured that as long as its green, its still doing its thing?
Or do you think its the cold(which we haven't had this year) which turns them brown?

They need to go thru their cycle. They have already gone thru the blooming cycle for year 2005 and now need to get ready for the next blooming season.
Cut them.

I wonder if the plants are as confused as I am, lol. I will cut them.

I've grown glads for many years, and this is the first time I've ever had this happen.

Well, maybe it is the warmer winter then. I would figure in BC it would be much colder than down here anyways.
In Texas, I don't know anything about the warm season places. But I do know plants do have their cycles and you need to try to follow their normal pattern as much as possible.
If you see new shoots coming up tho, I would definitely leave them tho.
Carol

You mean cut the old growth, but leave the new? So far, there isn't any of the latter.

Please don't think I know anything...I don't think I do! I have left my glads partially cut and finished cutting them in the spring many times. It has never seemed to hurt them. In my zone they are not s'posed to even come back and I've had them for over 8 years now. But, if everyone is saying to cut them, I would if I were you. My laziness is not an excuse for you to be lazy too! LOL I doubt that leaving them has hurt them any, it's never hurt mine even if they did turn brown and icky looking and never got their "hair cut" till spring.

Your glads continue to vegetate. If you're sure that the corms will not be frozen, leave them a bit longer in the grownd. You'll get bigger corms. Otherwise, I would advise you to cut the stems and gig out the corms.

Armenia, wow. DG is getting big. Greetings, Boyed!

This is what makes DG so great - gardening fiends from all over the world; greetings, Boyed, and thanks for the info.
We don't get hard freezes here, so I think maybe I will just leave them be - should I cut them in the spring when the new growth starts up?

Zeus, I always cut mine as early in the spring as possible, before any new growth starts to show.

Thank you guys for warm greeting!

2zeus, I hope in spring your leaves will be already turned yellow. Of course, you should cut them efore the new growth starts up.

Oh, I forgot; if you want to propagate them quickly, you'd better dig the corms out after vegetation is finished, separate the small daughter corms and again plant them.

By the way, we have some gladiolus species growing wild here in Armenia. They are very nice and very frost-hardy. Here is a pic of gladiolus kotschyanus. I hope it will be interesting for you.

Regards, Zhirair

Boyed, Those are lovely. Keep those native plant pics coming, please.
2zeus, In the Fall of '04 my neighbor was discarding some glads that were just finishing blooming. He didn't like them because the flower stem always fell over with too-heavy blooms. I salvaged them, cut the very green growth off and stored them for the winter.
They bloomed and multiplied the next season. I now have about 15 big orange ones that make great cut flowers.
So I don't see a problem with cutting the green leaves, if I can mistreat those discards so rudely and still have them grow so well.
Andy P

It's just that when I began gardening in earnest, I had a British friend who was (is) positively rabid on the subject of allowing bulb/corm/tuber foliage to die back naturally, without cutting, or tying into cute little bows, etc....I feel as though I'm contravening some great rule of life to even consider cutting off green foliage from anything with an underground storage system! :)

My DH is from the "chop it mercilessly and see what happens!" school - you should have seen our trees the year I acquiesed to his pleading, and got him a pole pruner for Christmas - they all looked like Q-tips stuck into the ground - a stick with a sort of vaguely ball-shaped clump of green right at the top...

LOL Zeus!!! ROTFL here!!!

So, YOU be the NORMAL middle ground person! Let it remain green for a bit to get it's nutrients, then cut it back.

When it's fall clean up time is a good time to cut stuff back. When the leaves on the trees are changing and falling off. (That is if your DH left any leaves!) By then things have gotten what they need stored up and it's safe to cut them back.

At the same time you could let your DH go WILD on the leaves making a nice mulch for you!! Then cover all your nice little plants with it after you cut them back...then they are all tucked in for their winter nap. You're happy, DH is happy, plants are happy! ;~)

This is all so entertaining...

C'mon now, Kenton, you are a man, tell us - when you get pruning implements in your hand, do you go into a trance where everything in the immediate vicinity looks as though it is in desperate need of major surgery?


(remember the old adage - "When your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail!")

Surgury? It is more clearly described as efficient destruction.
I have certainly "encountered" my share of unwilling and innocent "nails!"

I had the record of cutting down a mulberry tree for a friend (roots in cellar, etc)and cutting it to bits to fit into my pickup in less than an hour! -and with only my trusty mini climbing-capable bow hand-saw. I must have had some coffee that night...
Kenton