Dear All, There is not much to add to the thread on South African gladiolus. As the membership is living in many different countries and climates and some may be beginners, I would still like to go into some details nevertheless. In general, it does not hurt gladiolus seed if the winter growers are sown too early. They will germinate once the conditions are right, however, a seed pot should not be allowed to dry out completely after sowing. Even if germination may be delayed. The trigger for germination is the combination of cool weather and moisture (rain) and also a marked difference between night and day temperature. So the best timing is when this is going to happen in your climate. It will be much later the warmer your local weather is. On the other hand, sowing too late may kill the seedlings during their first dormancy. Simply because they did not have the time to form a corm (or a bulb in other genera) which is big enough to survive the first dormancy. As a rule of thumb I stop sowing winter growers around Christmas for the very latest in the northern hemisphere. Summer growing gladiolus should be sown in spring. They are less prone to loss during their first dormancy because a cool and dry winter dormancy is less demanding on the seedling corms than a hot and dry summer dormancy. If you miss the best time to sow, it is no problem at all to wait for the next season, gladiolus seed can be stored (best in a fridge, not the freezer) for quite some time. Once germination gets going, the small seedlings do benefit from repeated low dose fertilizer. And it is important to keep them green as long as possible in spring when the weather warms up. The longer they remain green the bigger the young corms will be. Rising temperatures trigger dormancy. So depending on where you live it might be a good idea to move the seedlings out of a greenhouse to a shady place in the garden or to move them from a place with full winter sun to a shady and cool place as well. That is what I do, my bulb seed is sown outdoors in a sunny place exposed to all weather in southern Portugal. During periods of heavy rain I protect from too much rain but without impairing ventilation. In general I do not repot my gladiolus seedlings but leave them in the same seed pot for another season. I am always afraid that I might lose some of the often tiny one year old corms in the process. Hope that helps, happy sowing! Uli _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net http://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/… Unsubscribe: <mailto:pbs-unsubscribe@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> PBS Forum https://…