This is a beautiful season for many spring bulbs. But it's also time to plant summer, and fall blooming bulbs. Has anyone has good experience growing crinums, especially making them to bloom profusely to share? I've this crinum, it took several years to bloom (just as many has shared experience at DG). My goal is to find out more information to plants more of these beauties in the garden.
Kim
'Milk and Wine'? vs " Powellii" ?
Is that blooming now? I grow a lot of crinums but to identify one from pic's is really tough. Species is much easier for me to ID from pictures. What is called "milk and wine" covers a wide range of hybrid and species turf.
As dmj was saying "Milk and Wine" is a general garden name for a great many plants. Any of the white-flowered hybrids and species that have a rose to red stripe down the tepals can be called that.
I have a special fondness for the "milk and wine lilies". Yours looks like one that I have myself.
Your plant isn't xpowellii, but is one of a group of plants called an "xherbertii-type". (Any seedling of a cross between the species C. bulbispermum and C. scabrum. There are a multitude of forms around and many have been named and many not.Only if you received it with a name or could trace it back to someone who knows that kind of thing about it could you ever put more than xherbertii-type on it. They usually pass from gardener to gardener with only "milk and wine lily" for a name, as they have done since the cross entered cultivation in the early 1800's. (The original cross was done in 1819.) Another common name for them is "cemetary lilies" since they were frequently planted there ages ago.
Some of the named varieties are worth having due to the deeper coloring of the stripe, but they are very hard to come by. 'Carroll Abbot' is particularly nice. I have several different clones that show some variation is flower form, color, size etc., though none of them came with a specific name attached, except for one.
Not saying that you have this one, but I have seen one plant called 'Gulf Pride' offered for sale and your plant looks similar. I have a start of 'Gulf Pride' and am anxious to see it bloom to compare to the plants I got from a neighbor (with no name) that were originally from Florida, and look much like yours.
Growing this kind of Crinum:
First off--give it lots of room and place where you can let it go 3-5 years undisturbed. This plant will make a huge clump and pull itself deeper in the soil. Digging them up is quite a chore and becomes even more so as the years go by. The plants flower much better (more scapes and more blossoms per scape) as they become well-established. You might be faced with an enormous clump in "the wrong place" and have to dig the whole thing up, so pick your spot well, or plan to dig and divide sooner than necessary.
Thinking further ahead--will you want to share bulbs later on? You would want to divide about every 5 years anyway and so you could then start some single-bulb clumps so that you don't have to dig up the whole huge clump and disrupt it's flowering. They usually bloom less well the year after a move, so always having an older clump to leave in the ground gives you the best show, and you can dig up the smaller separate bulbs or clumps to share.
If you have several bulbs to start with, you could plant one to let become well-established and undisturbed for as long as you care to, and dig and divide the smaller clumps for sharing.
They send out roots in all direction but up, and that can be 6 feet or more. So plan ahead on that too as far as other plants in the area and if they'll be in the way when (if) you dig the clump up.
For the best plants, give them lots of sun. They can take full summer sun down to part sun, but growth and flowering is better with good strong summer sun.
Plenty of compost added to the soil will really make them grow. They love an enriched clayey soil, but will take sandy loam to almost pure clay, if they have to, but again, we're talking about making them flourish, so add plenty of compost to clay or very sandy soils.
Water regularly and deeply in summer and feed liberally. Some people like to let them go through a dry period a few weeks after flowering, and then return them to plentiful watering--the result is often another flush of blooms. I have had plants flower in September and in the deep south, they are said to throw scapes year-round!
Watch out for "red blotch" on the foliage during spring rains when the temperature is low.
They're really an easy plant to grow and they're tough as iron, but the more you prepare a good spot, the more likely you'll have a traffic-stopping show later on.
A neighbor's planting of xherbertii:
raydio that is a great picture!!
I second the think hard on where you locate it--being 5'4" and female here and digging up a 7 year old clump last June in Texas throughly convinced me of this idea. And I have really good loamy easy to dig soil--I can imagine the work involved when you did that bunch Robert.
It convinced me to stick with the smaller species. =)
I have some Marcelle Sheppard hybrids from seed which should be large enough to bloom this year--usually I give those away to the neighbors, but I decided to keep a few, they usually are milk and wine.
There is also a source in Florida for C zeylanicum for $10; it's listed off the PlantFiles:
http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/showimage/138070/
'Stars and Stripes' is a really nice hybrid if you can find it.
Debbie
dmj and Raydio; thanks so much for so many helpful information. The pic. I posted was from a mature bulbs that took a few years to bloom after I've moved from my old residence a few years back. And yes, they're a good source of pass along plant for its 'toughness' and ability to multiply. Such beauty, I'll try to cultivate some more. dmj; the pic. was taken last June.
One thing that some people do when they want to keep a good multiplier in bounds, is to plant *very* deep. This has the effect of sizing up the bulb and thereby promoting it to have multiple scapes/reblooms, while cutting down on offsets which can cause the motherbulb to shrink in size and not bloom as well.
For some prolific offsetters, like JC Harvey, it will help a good deal, since JCH can be reluctant to bloom much due to all the offsets.
How deep to set them? As deep as you can dig! The base of the bulb can be at least 12" deep and deeper down is fine too.
R.
Raydio; thanks for the tips. You're really working me hard here. But I'll do as instructed. I've a roughly 10 x 10 bed that was over crowded itself after years of neglect from an old residence. I just dug them up and will replant them as instructed. 1sq. foot per small bulbs? 2 sq. feet for the big ones? and a feet deep. Ouch I can see lot of back ache coming.
I hope that's enough room... depends on how quickly your plants grow and multiply and how often you plan to dig and divide. The foliage gets long, as you no doubt saw in their old bed, so be sure that their "neighbors" won't mind them sprawling into their space.
And you'll need room to work in if dividing the clump is something you plan to do.
R.
They were in clay soil, luckily the soil was saturated from rain, the digging wasn't too difficult. All the roots came up nicely and unbroken. They are all easily separated.
Kim
It took this bulb 2-3 years to bloom after it was transplanted last time. I hope that I would do something different this time to hasten the blooms?
If the bulb was blooming-size before the move, then I would think that when it was dug, the root system was pruned back to a great extent. As I said before, the root system of an old clump can spread out 6' in all directions and going straight down into the soil below, but near the bulb is a thick mass of spaghetti-like feeder roots that are needed even more than those long pencil-thick or thicker "running roots".
2 to 3 years is common for a newly planted bulb or transplanted to begin blooming again, and depends in part on its size at the time, how much root it has, and in what season it was dug up. Some well-tended blooming-sized bulbs with a large root-ball intact might not miss a year of blooming at all, though the number of scapes isn't as high as it was before transplanting.
I'll repeat what an xherbertii like yours needs to flourish, since supplying *all* those things speeds recovery and re-establishment and all but guarantees the best of what it can be as time passes:
Deeply cultivated, loose, humus-enriched soil. (Crinums want to make a huge root system. Even though they will send those long thick roots into pure clay hard-pan, what they prefer is a softer moisture-retentive soil to establish the thick mass of thin feeder roots close around the bulb.)
As close to *full sun* as you can supply. (Growth is quicker and stronger. They will adapt to whatever they face, but the more they get what they "want", the better they'll do. The more sun they are in, the more important good watering becomes.)
Frequent and deep irrigations during the growing season along with fertilizer. You won't go wrong with a balanced formula like 20-20-20, but there are other formulations that will work, and in a good rich soil, you may not have to feed but once or twice a season, early on and then later after flowering. Some folks rely on the soil alone to supply the plants needs, but over time, the soil can become depleted and growth flags. (Bulbs are storage organs for nutrients, so give them plenty to store. And all that foliage and roots growth needs a lot of "fuel".)
I think that all those three are needed together for the best growth, but we do with what we have to work with.
R.
