When to clean gladioli: advice of specialists

The second name of this beautiful flower is a sword. If you look closely at the leaves, they look like swords. Translated from the Latin "gladiolus" means "short sword".

The main mistake of gardeners

Many beginning gardeners achieve good flowering in plants, but, unfortunately, after they make one unfortunate mistake. They collect all available information on how to care for gladioli. Try and make a lot of effort to prepare the soil and choose varieties, but miss one point. This is due to the time when you remove the gladiolus for the winter.

Many divide flowers into early, medium ripening and late varieties, but not everyone knows that the color of the plant also plays a role in the formation and development of tubers. This is exactly what happens with gladioli. At the time when it's time to clean gladioli, remember that dark varieties complete the formation of a bulb a week earlier than flowers with light inflorescences. Therefore, they can be excavated in a month and no more, otherwise the decay of the tubers may begin. The standard time for harvesting gladioli for the winter begins one and a half months after the end of the flowering period. Plants, planted from the children, you can leave the last.

When to clean gladioli: recommendations of gardeners

Choose a warm and sunny day. In order not to damage the children on the bulb, they should be excavated with a pitchfork with three teeth. You can use a shovel, but then you have to clean tubers from a lot of land, which does not happen when using forks. In any case, all the extracted planting material should be cleared from the ground and slightly dried. Many gardeners are recommended almost immediately after the bed to pick it from pests, offering to use for this purpose a variety of drugs (boric acid, potassium, manganese or carbophosic solution and many others). Next, cut off the entire aboveground part of the stem, leaving a stump a couple of centimeters high, and put the bulbs to dry in a ventilated room with a temperature above 20 ° C. The drying process takes a couple of months. During this time, it is necessary to revise the planting material several times to identify diseased tubers.

Measures to get rid of thrips

If thrips are found, immediate action should be taken. Infected corms are destroyed, healthy place in packages of polyethylene, in which a little aerosol preparation is added from insects. The package after tightly tied and left for an hour and a half. The second method, suitable for getting rid of the parasite, is to hold the tubers for five minutes in hot water (above 50 ° C) and dry it. Now there comes a time when to remove gladioli should be for the winter. If they are not stored in a refrigerator (in paper bags), they are peppered with sand. Here's another good tip for owners of flowers such as gladioli: how to cut them, without harming the plant. For this you can use a knife, an awl. The cut takes place in cool weather or early in the morning, late at night. We find a place in the leaves, from where comes the flower spike, and pierce the hole in it through the leaves. Then, from both sides, we cut only the stem. The remaining leaves will close over the place of the cut and will not allow infection or parasites to enter there.