"Commercial" Freesias

Jane McGary janemcgary@earthlink.net
Mon, 28 Oct 2013 11:59:06 PDT
I have to disagree about the usefulness of keeping commercial freesia 
corms after they have flowered once. I have a lot of them going into 
the third year now, from a couple of packets bought at a garden 
center. I didn't "bake" them deliberately but they sat around in 
their pots after going dormant the first year and surprised me by 
returning to flower a second year, so this summer I planted them on 
into a big planter in the bulb house, and they are emerging in 
apparent good health. They increase rapidly.

One curious thing I noticed when I grew commercial freesias at my old 
place, in the bulb frames was that after a few years the only color 
surviving was yellow. I assumed that this clone was more cold-hardy 
than the others.

These are all single, not double, freesias, as the singles have 
better fragrance so are more useful for cutting.

Jane McGary
Portland, Oregon, USA

At 07:04 AM 10/28/2013, you wrote:
>When they flower the ground color must be uniform with no signs of 
>blotches or mosaic. If these have been baked over the summer to 
>obtain bloom they will be useless to keep as corms.




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