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I have several pots from bulb exchange and most of them are turning tan or brown and one is tipping over. Its happening outside and in my unheated greenhouse.

Any ideas or is this pretty normal coloration just sort of weak growing in more shade than sun. Santa Cruz

Here is a Lachenalia calcicola that has started to fade from a soft purple to a softer pink. Seed grown and I seed a few more germinating this year.

Update:

treatment = germinated seeds
water soak = 0
K2O soak = 2
smoke disk soak = 5

I think there were 25 seeds so not great germination but perhaps under less than optimal conditions, smoke helps with germination.

Quote from: Robert_Parks on December 19, 2022, 11:00:26 PMOca (Oxalis tuberosa) dozen+ varieties 16 lbs/7kg, again Creamy Yellow was the highest yielder with nearly 4 pounds. A couple poor performers are going to get turfed out.


Robert
in chilly SF, with lots of winter geophytes showing off

Hi Robert, those Oca look great. Are you growing them in your sandy SF soil or in pots?

Quote from: Arnold on December 13, 2022, 12:50:30 PMFirst Ferraria of the season. Last year blooms on Dec. 17.

Beautiful.
You must have them in a greenhouse. I have considered moving some of my newly gifted bulbs into my unheated GH but not sure it would make much difference aside from getting rained on. Coastal CA.

The only one I have tried and eaten is Oxalis tuberose. Robert P gifted me a wonderful selection of 'cultivars' that we grew at Cabrillo horticulture for sale at the farmers market.

The yield in 1 gallon pots was really variable some producing 1-2 tubers while other over 10.

I also have one in a much larger pot that I have not harvested yet.

Taste is wonderful. Cooked in stir fry they have a really smooth texture and a slightly sweet taste.

I found the process to be much different. I applied for a permit to import some seed and the permit was approved in minutes. Gaining access to the shipping labels was more difficult due to some browser issues on my part.

However, the burden is really on the seed supplier to adhere to the rules.
The package must have a green/yellow shipping sticker and nothing else on the package with a list of 5 or 6 things inside the package.

I ordered 5 small packages ($22 worth) from the Netherlands and I am not sure I want to ask them to do this for me.

I will ask but for such a small order I will not be surprised if he declines.

In the mid 80's I was working for a large potted plant grower along the west coast. We were just getting into the potted Freesia boom. 
We had weekly plantings of 5000 pots of 4" (3 corms each) and 2000 6" pots (5 or 6 corms each ). 


It was a long time ago, so I am not sure what the season was, but some of the cultivars would pupate and not grow. 

The challenge was not the lack of bulbs but how they responded throughout the seasons, especially after too long or short a chilling period. 

I watched the whole videos from China, they were growing the bulbs outside, harvesting just prior and during flowering, then harvesting whole flowers, while sitting down, then someone else was pulling off the stamens.

It was not vertical farming. Basically vertical processing.

Our lettuce and basil beats organic farmed in flavor, useable lettuce (not one leaf is unusable) and the basil has better flavor. Easy to see who sells out at the farmers market and who doesn't. We sell our basil to a former 3 star chef, who now cooks pizza. 

Like it or not, weather happens and outdoor crops fail all over the world. When we have rain, all the lettuce is bad, dirty, and cant be harvested. Lettuce wholesale costs tripled after the last rain. Ours was perfect.

There is a trade off between yield and flavor with tomatoes. There is only so much sugar to go around. Adjusting the EC of the fertilizer water will either increase water content (yield) or decrease water decrease (flavor).

My hobby goal might be to raise saffron in my aquaponics system.

I spent 9 months at Writtle College on sabbatical and we used to go to Saffron Upon Avon all the time!

I hope to learn from all of you, so excuse me if I am being rude.

Quote from: David Pilling on November 03, 2022, 11:17:03 AMGrowing stuff indoors is something they like to demonstrate these days. It's often shown on the TV - how to produce salad crops in the centre of big cities. I tried and could not grow saffron crocus to flower here - too dark, cold, whatever. From the text of the article it appears growing saffron in the wild is becoming difficult and that has driven them indoors. That would mean they were not flowering the bulbs indoors one year and then letting them recover in the wild, or bringing in new plants from the wild.
There is a town in England "Saffron Walden" famous for growing Saffron in the middle ages. Not a thing now, but seemingly due to the cost of picking the crop, not climate change.

Hi David. For the last 15 years I have been involved with growing veggies of all sorts (fruiting and leaf) in greenhouses which is what I am referring to, not in my house. (Though the glads were in my backyard aquaponics system in LECA).


I have my reservations about the vertical farms with sole source lighting really working on a commercial scale without venture capital spending, but a proper commercial greenhouse with supplemental lighting can produce single or rotating crops year round. 

To see a successful business look at Gotham Greens. Once a small rooftop greenhouse in Brooklyn NY the company has something like 7-8 very large greenhouses spread over the US.

Potted flowering bulbs grown as cuts or in pots  have been grown in substrates for a really long time. All it takes is time and a market to figure out how to do it. With my upcoming retirement, seems like a great backyard project.

I think the key here is growing them indoors. I have been thinking about looking for bulbs to trial indoors at my department CEA greenhouses, as well as in my home aquaponics system. I had a couple of glads in ebb and flood LECA beds (3'x4') and in 2 years I had so many corms I had to empty the beds to remove them all. 

Yesterday I sowed the seeds, so we will see.

three small treatments of 25~ seeds

0.5% KNO3, Smoke paper, plain water

24 hr soak.

Title says it all, just curious about the duration?

I read 30 minutes, that sound right?


Diplarrena latifolia is the seed I am wondering about

Peter

I know these are not uncommon and a bit weedy but they sure look great this time of year.

Not sure which species this is...

perfect, thats great information,

much appreciated by a guy that loves bulbs but knows nothing about growing them