Growing Dierama in Zone 9

Gastil Gastil-Buhl gastil.buhl@gmail.com
Mon, 24 Feb 2014 17:07:19 PST
Here in Santa Barbara both in my garden and on the university campus there are Dierama that self-sow and grow to formidable clumps with yearly blooming. 
I think they are D. pendulum and/or D. pulcherrimum. A few bloom off-season but the main bloom is April. This strange year they are already blooming now in 
February. This is approximately usda zone 9b or 10a. Our summers are closer to San Francisco's than Texas, by far, but occasionally exceeding 85 F on hot 
days and even rarely over 90 F but with night time cooling. The USDA zones are better for predicting cold tolerance than heat tolerance.

However, the difference between in-ground planting and growing in containers is important. Here I have attempted to grow Dierama in pots to more easily 
share them as they resent transplanting. The ones in pots struggle to survive to blooming size. The ones in the ground thrive. Dierama has a tap root that goes 
quite deep, much deeper than a standard gallon pot. The few pots that survived had reached out the bottom of the pot and were growing their tap root in the 
soil below. As mentioned already these do require full sun but you might try an in-ground planting where the roots are well shaded and thus cooler but the 
leaves can reach into sun. This may be another example where the soil temperature matters more than the air temperature.

- Gastil



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