Greetings all:

According to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, my Halifax location is zone
6a. I am a beginner gardener.

Anyhoo, last year I was advised to dig up my gladiola bulbs before the
Atlantic Canadian winter came in and froze them all to death. Fair enough.
Thinking myself very clever, I dug them up in the late summer/early fall,
left them out to dry for a bit, then put them in plastic containers full of
sand. My theory was that the sand would absorb any moisture in them.

Bad idea. With a beautiful spring day today, I got thinking about planting,
and then got the bright idea to bring them out of the basement today. All
three of the three containers have damp sand, rotten bulbs, and two of them
contain about a gazillion of what look like aphids.

Obviously I've done something wrong, likely several somethings. Most of my
glad bulbs are now toast. Then I went and opened the stargazer lily bulbs
that I purchased a month or two ago and found some moldy bulbs among the
good.

Needless to say, I'm pretty discouraged. Obviously my storage methods need
help (although the stargazers might have been bad in the first place, hadn't
opened the package until today). Fortunately my peony roots in the same
closet still seem OK.

Any advice out there?

Thanks,

KD