The Bulb Garden
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The Bulb Garden What’s Inside… Getting from Seedlings to Flowering Bulbs in the Garden Kathleen Sayce Scadoxus in Zimbabwe Jonathan Hutchinson, p.2 > Bulb and Seed Exchange, p. 9 ~Gardening with Bulbs ~ Getting from Seedlings to Flowering Bulbs in the Garden Kathleen Sayce teristics. Cold frames, alpine houses, Kathleen Sayce lives on the south coast of portable covers, watering systems, and Washington in the Pacific Northwest, where she greenhouses are all ways to control cli- gardens on the east face of a sand dune above mate issues. salt marshes on Willapa Bay, a mile from the Soils and soil mixes: On the way to Pacific Ocean. An ecologist, she consults on wetland mitigation, landscape management and flowering size bulbs in pots, soil mixes native plant gardening. Formerly a science of- may age out and lose critical air space. ficer for the country’s first environmental bank, Suddenly, or slowly. Wonder why Jane she applied energy and physics principles to help McGary and Uli Urban detailed their clients run businesses more efficiently, anticipat- preferred soil mixes so carefully? It’s a Volume 17, Issue 4 ing several of the many carbon drawdown pro- cesses being promulgated today. prime failure route. I use ground pumice and gravel in my pots to maintain soil Board of Directors There are many ways for seed- porosity for three to five years. Those grown bulbs to fail to establish and who read Ian Young’s Bulb Log know Robin Hansen, President [email protected] thrive in the open garden. Having in- that Ian details his potting mixes just as Vice-president, vacant vested considerable effort to get from carefully. It is critical that a soil mix in Kathy Andersen, Secretary seed to flowering bulb, it can be dis- a pot keeps good porosity for years [email protected] heartening to find that the last step, when growing bulbs from seed to seed- Arnold Trachtenberg, Treasurer from pot to open soil, was not, or worse, ling to planting out. [email protected] cannot be successful. Some failure Once out in the garden, soils may be Jane McGary, Membership modes you can control, some you can- too acidic, too alkaline, drain poorly, or [email protected] not. Success comes more easily when drain and dry off too much. Some of Luminita Vollmer, BX Director the bulb’s needs line up with your gar- these characters can be modified; some [email protected] den’s conditions, including climate, lo- cannot. Many gardeners resort to spe- Lee Poulsen, At-large cal herbivores, regional diseases, insect cially prepared beds to overcome drain- [email protected] pests, soil characteristics, and perhaps age issues, porosity, organic levels, or to most importantly, how much patience provide the right pH. Volunteers you have as a gardener to decipher past By accident I found that a healthy failures and try again. garden soil amended with minerals, PBS list: David Pilling (List Adminis- Climate: A species may not cope with compost, and a mulch of fresh hard- trator), Eugene Zielinski, Diane Whitehead your climate. It may be too sunny, too wood chips (made from leaves and shady, too cold, too dry, too wet, too branches, and called ramial) produced PBS wiki: David Pilling (Wiki Editor) Martin Grantham, Mary Sue Ittner, humid, or not cold or warm enough. good soil characteristics for many spe- Nhu Nguyen, David Pilling, Sometimes you can modify climatic cies. I even bought a chipper so I could The Bulb Garden: Robin Hansen, problems sufficiently by manipulating chip freshly cut hardwood branches and Editor soil or shade or seasonal covers to leaves. I amend all beds every few years The PBS Directory: Jane McGary, achieve flowering bulbs. Jane McGary Editor with minerals, my own ramial, and oth- overcame climatic issues in her garden er woody chips (both hardwood and Publications Distribution: Arnold Trachtenberg by installing an open-sided greenhouse conifer). I also add biochar when I have roof, and raised beds with carefully de- it available. With ramial, good mineral signed soil mixes to control soil charac- supplements, and compost, the nitrogen Continued on page 3 Page 2 Scadoxus in Zimbabwe by Jonathan Hutchinson The Bulb Garden Jonathan Hutchinson is a previous recipient of the was possibly dried years before, that so much of the Mary Sue Ittner Bulb Grant to study Scadoxus in Ethiopia plant is lost due to pressing, particularly all the colour and holds the National Collection of Scadoxus at Devon in pigments, and especially the feel of the plant. How England. He continues to research and grow this fascinat- much we take for granted with the plants that we ing genera of bulbs. All photos are by the author. grow! In June of this year I was invited to give a talk to Another major topic of the weekend, and a par- staff members at the Oslo Botanic Garden in Nor- ticularly exciting one, was that I had been asked by way. This came about from an initial contact with Professor Bjorå if I would be interested in joining a some professors and students who are undertaking botanical trip to Zimbabwe! She was arranging this work on specific genera of African petaloid monocot- twelve-day study trip along with Professor Clemence yledons including Scadoxus. Zimudzi of the University in Harare, Zimbabwe, and In the previous summer it was suggested that I would include other professors, MSc and PhD stu- contact Professor Charlotte Sletten Bjorå, who was dents from both countries. The trip was based on a undertaking DNA research on Scadoxus but was lim- number of petaloid monocotyledon genera of which ited by the amount of material that was available for Scadoxus was one that a number of the participants the studies. Volume 17, Issue 4 In October of 2018 I was delighted that Profes- sor Bjorå and Professor Inger Nordal were able to visit the National Collection of Scadoxus (which Jonathan holds in Devon, U.K.), where we spent much of a sunny weekend taking leaf samples for rapid drying in silica gel. This preserved the quality of DNA needed for their research. In the 1970s Professor Nordal had done much of the research and taxonomic work on Scadox- us, which until that time was still part of Haeman- thus, making it a particularly easy genus to become familiar with. She was now very keen to see this work progress and to see tested a number of hypoth- eses that had formed, though at the time of the ini- tial re- search Above: Scadoxus pole-evansii. there Left: Scadoxus puniceus, growing in full sun. was not enough had a particular interest. materi- Zimbabwe is a country I had wanted al avail- to visit for many years primarily because able to one of the Scadoxus species, S. pole- enable evansii, is endemic to the Nyanga any Mountains that border Zimbabwe and conclu- Mozambique. This was such a fantastic sions. opportunity, knowing that one of the key I aims was to find this beautiful species will and also that I would be travelling with always such a knowledgeable group, I was remem- bound to get a great deal from the expe- ber how rience. Profes- Another aspect which was particularly important sor Nordal marvelled at the thickness of the flower to Professor Bjorå was that the distribution of Sca- bract of Scadoxus membranaceus. Asked if she had doxus puniceus which runs down the eastern side of not seen the plant before, she said that she had only the continent is disjunct with distinct isolated pockets known many of the plants previously from herbarium between Ethiopia and South Africa. One of these specimens. Whilst I knew this was the case for much areas is in the south of Zimbabwe, limited to areas in taxonomic study, it hadn’t really occurred to me what and around Matobo National Park. This had been the an onerous task botanists and taxonomists must have basis of one of the hypotheses raised by Professor to be able to provide a description from a plant that Nordal, as to whether these isolated pockets come continued on page 7 Page 3 Growing from Seedlings to ... cont’d demand is minimal. I use feather meal, alfalfa meal and to eat while trashing the invertebrate health of the soil. I other plant sources rather than synthetic nitrogen; the lat- no longer use them. I’d rather have healthy soils and ter strips carbon from soils, and my silty sand needs all moles than unhealthy soils and no moles. the carbon it can get. Slugs and snails: Introduced species of slugs and snails When you dig up a plump and healthy bulb to find (otherwise known as terrestrial pulmonates) are voracious vigorous white roots wrapped around fungal-inoculated and indiscriminate consumers of fresh foliage. Use a gen- wood fragments, you know you are doing something that eral scattering of slug and snail bait throughout the gar- plants like. This doesn’t work for all species, but my den as Ian Young does, to keep their numbers down. main focus is western North America bulbs, and most of If you have lawn, and if that lawn has a number of them seem very happy with this treatment. As are Pacific European dandelion-like weeds, you are inadvertently Coast native iris, lilies, roses, penstemons, fleabanes, and providing nursery habitat for slugs and snails. Just say- others. ing. One such species, Hypocharis radicata, hairy cat’s- Herbivores: These are a key failure mode, and are di- ear, has leathery broad leaf rosettes, which pulmonates verse, with various plant dietary preferences. Small herbi- seem to prefer for their eggs.