The continuous rain does not stop those of us gardeners that are conscientious. So with the rain on my back I had to get stuck into the bulb frame and finish the re-potting. As it turned out I was just in time as the cool nights had started some of the bulbs into growth. The entire Narcissus crop had a scattering of white roots about one inch long, and in one more week it would have been too late to move them.
I was alerted to this fact by the cyclamen that were potted on much earlier this year and had already started into growth. A lot of them are in full bloom at the moment including Cyclamen Africana and Hederifolium.
Many of the dwarf Narcissus that had been grown from seed had pots full of small bulbs, and had to be potted individually as they are now flowering size. I prefer to dispose of small bulbs when they are in flower, as people who are not quite familiar with all the varieties have a better idea of what they are getting. All the Narcissus Romieuxii forms have increased very well and along with those grown from seed I now have quite a nice stock of plants and will be more liberal with their distribution this year.
The Fritillaria caused the usual headache this year with hundreds of rice grains, and with perlite in the seed compost I had to engage the use of a magnifying glass to sort them out. I thought that after encountering the same problem last year that I promised myself I would not use perlite in the fritt. compost any more.
Only one of the new Chinese fritt's produced an offset , the others just increased in size but produced no pups. With no seed set and no offspring it will take a long time to build up a stock of these plants. Obviously my conditions are not too they're liking, of else I am doing something wrong, but I will probably catch on how to grow them successfully given a little time.
The Calochortus were sorted out and placed under the bench to continue their drying process, as they won't need potting until early November.
The new (snowdrop) Galanthus Sophie North has produced five huge bulbs, much bigger than I have ever seen for a snowdrop. I had to pot them individually to give them more room to develop and planted one of them out in the garden, carefully labelled, as I would hate to lose any of those precious bulbs.
