Ipheion and Nothoscordums

Mary Sue Ittner msittner@mcn.org
Mon, 05 Aug 2002 07:35:11 PDT
Dear John, Mark, and All,

When Bill Dijk shared the Nothoscordums with a group of us several years 
ago now Diana Chapman offered to write us instructions for turning them 
around. It was wonderfully written, very helpful, and also very funny. I 
will look for it and send her suggestions to you (John) privately. I mostly 
followed her suggestions (except since I live where it is cool in summer 
did not put them in the refrigerator at night). Mine were planted late 
February, came up in March and April and bloomed that spring. Since we did 
not have Alberto's excellent habitat instructions, when my went dormant, I 
dried them off and just watered occasionally and started them back into 
more regular watering in November. They emerged in December, but did not 
bloom. Since then they have emerged in the fall and bloomed in the winter. 
Muzza had shared a few with me from Australia at the same time Bill did. 
His were smaller and although they came up right away, did not bloom the 
first year and then did not break dormancy after I let them dry off for a 
whole year. When turning things around was the topic of the week and I 
reported this, Diana suggested I might be able to encourage them into 
growth by giving them more summer warmth (again Alberto confirms this) so I 
moved all pots to my greenhouse for the summer and the following fall the 
pot finally resumed growth and then the year after starting blooming. So 
the turn around time depended partly on the size of the bulb and if I had 
given them exactly what they needed may have been able to manage it quicker.

The ones I gave the BX are offsets from Bill and Muzza's gifts and probably 
are not blooming size yet. I always try to give bulblets and bulbs being 
turned around special treatment since they seem more vulnerable.

Now that Alberto has given me permission to share his wisdom with this 
forum I will be doing that from time to time. The Australian forum is a 
friendly interesting forum and there are quite a few people from this forum 
that are on both the PBS forum and the ABS forum. If someone from there has 
not given you instructions on joining I will do so when I send you Diana's 
post.

Mark, it is so interesting to hear about all the ones you grow. Some of 
these I have never heard of before. Can you tell us a little about N. 
minarum, ostenii, hirtellum? N. montevidense sounds just wonderful. Since 
you get seed of it, can any of us ever hope it will make its way to the BX 
or NARGS seed list? Do those species I am asking about set seed?

Also since you haven't officially introduced yourself (I know you as the 
man who writes all those wonderful articles on Alliums that makes me want 
to grow ones that are not suitable for my climate) can you tell us a little 
about what the climate conditions are where you garden. It is so 
interesting that these make good house plants.

I loved looking at your web page briefly and see I will have to return and 
spend more time looking at it and will write a question about something I 
saw there in a later post.

Mary Sue





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