KD wrote:
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

Don't take posession of the bulbs until you can plant them. Over your
bulbs/corms in peat moss or dry sawdust and don't seal them up in
plastic containers. Let them breathe. Keep them cool and in the dark
over the winter.

--

Travis in Shoreline (just North of Seattle) Washington
USDA Zone 8
Sunset Zone 5