Lilium 2013

[Heinie]

Thank you for your kind compliments.

KBW
I use a very simple small Canon A520 camera.

Mikhurram
I have mostly Asiatic Liliums but I also have a few Orientals as well. I agree that the Asiatics are fuss free and just flower year after year and multiply profusely too. My bulbs are all grown in various sizes of pots because the soil in my area is 100% clay.

I save my bulbs by placing the pots in places where they are kept dry for the dormant season. I also cut the stems to about 100mm when they go into storage. I notice that some of the Liliums are starting to emerge now.

Arif
Nice to see your name now, thanks.

I live 12 kilometers north of Cape Town on the Tygerberg Hills next to a Nature Reserve. Spring will start here on the 1st of September. We had a very wet winter and it is still raining. The temperatures at night at the moment is around 8C and around 15C during the day. We never get frost here.

In summer our night temps are around 15C and between 26C and 42C during the day but the temps above 30C is only occasionally and not the norm. I attach a few photos taken from my house in the direction of Cape Town. You also see the Cape Town harbor and Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was kept captive most of his 27 years.

This is the world famous Table Mountain from the back of my house towards the right


This photo, a little more right of the previous one, indicates Robben Island in the centre of the photo. It is about 12 kilometers from the Cape Town horbour.


The Cape Town harbour is in the centre of the photo on the right. The N1 highway in the foreground that runs from Cape Town in the south to the north of South Africa and crossing the border to Zimbabwe. It is about 2300 kilometers long.


This photo also shows the mountains on the left of Table Mountain from the back of my house


This photo is the area a little more left of the photo above with the world renowned Tygerberg Hospital in the large brown building

[Farhan Ahmed]

You have an excellent winter & summer climate. The temperatures that you mentioned are ideal in my view. Our average temperatures in summer (long summer from April-September) are above 40 C. and in most cases more than 45 C. Even at nights our minimum temperatures are close to 30 C in summers. That is real tough for plants. Similarly frost is also common in northern areas in winters. Our next concern is drought in hotter months which is followed by Monsoon which is a very wet period and can result into bulbs rooting in ground if not taken care of well.

Only for two small spells we get good weather such as yours which is Spring (Late Feb to Early April) and secondly fall which is shortlived i.e Mid Oct to Mid November.

[Muhammad Arif Khan]

Heinie, Thank you, What a place to live a retired life, It will be a great help to understand your gardening.
Your container gardening interests me the most, I feel we are far behind in this field and must get educated especially in choice of media or rather development of container media out of what is easily available to us. The use of fertilisers and size of pots etc.
Regards
Arif

[Muhammad Arif Khan]

TWO OTHER POTS DRIED UP ON UN POTTING i FOUND THE BULBS WERE TWICE THE SIZE i SOWED.
CONFUSED
ARIF

These bulbs along with some of their bulblets were stored in a plastic bag with some moist peat in the crisper compartment of refrigerator, yesterday I opened it and found a big mass of tangled roots and shoots.



Out of curiosity I opened one of the pots having dormant bulbs, The growth was there too but relatively far less.
How the biological clock works?
Arif

[Farhan Ahmed]

I don't think its biological clock. Its more to do with temperatures. I too refrigerated few bulbs, all of them sprouted in fridge in few weeks time (around August/September).

[Syed Adnan]

Lillium dosn't required to be stored in fridge , in a normal soil in a pot/ground they can tolerate heat and came out again next season. But as it is a tender bulb it will be dead if stored out of soil or in a dry soil.

regards,

[Muhammad Arif Khan]

Farhan,
The bulbs were placed in the fridge on 9th June, they must have started sprouting about 2-4 weeks ago. The temperature is a factor but why did they take 4 months to sprout. The idea of opening the dormant pot was to see if these bulbs have sprouted or not, if there was no sprouting to chill them for 2 weeks. My past experience is that on their own they bloom late in April.

[Farhan Ahmed]

certain amount of days is required to break the dormancy maybe

[mikhurram]

Brig Sahib, your observation is accurate / spot on.

By placing them in refrigerated chillers or refrigerators they will bloom earlier. Infact some professional growers i know tend to save these lillium bulbs by storing them in refrigerated chillers during the hot summer months (May, June, July & August) and take them out from the chillers around middle of september. These refrigerater chillers where ice is made during the summer charge a nominal fee around Rs 150-200 per crate (1 crate can store atleast 100 bulbs).

If left to naturalize or fend for themselves in the ground these lilliums bloom around middle or end April in Lahore and the bloom time is severely cut short by rising temperatures. Due to the hot weather the bloom duration is merely for 10-15 days as temperature's start rising often rising up to 48'C around May. In addition this is followed by a wet humid monsoon season of 2 months and there is always the chance these bulbs may rot by monsoon showers.

Thus it's a good time to take them out of the ground and store them in refrigerators or chillers.

In my opinion the Asiatic or the longiflorum varieties are more hardier as compared to orientals.

[M Farooq]

Khurram sb, could start a new thread and share the science and logic of chilling the bulbs? This will serve as a tutorial for beginners (in the bulbs) like me. Making the bulbs flower seems more like an art (and magic). What makes them bloom earlier if the bulbs are chilled.