Freesia question
 

My wife planted in large pots last autumn a load of Freesia bulbs. this year
we have had a fantastic display,cut and taken indoors for vases. What is the
procedure to get the same show next year? do I leave them in the pots and
over winter them in the greenhouse or leave them out. Any advise please will
be gratefully accepted.
Mike

Freesia question
 

On Sat, 17 Jul 2004 08:29:59 +0100, Chris Hogg wrote:


Years ago I used to keep my freesias going year after year, IIRC by
letting the pots dry out in the greenhouse (frost free) in autumn,
then re-potting all the bulbs and offsets in fresh compost next year
to get them growing again. The numbers increased steadily, BUT over
two or three years, all the reds, purples etc died out, and all I had
left were yellows.

We were given a bunch of freesias a few months ago, but they had
absolutely no scent. Most disappointing. Is this the result of
intensive breeding to get earlier/bigger/whatever flowers?

We keep ours going (winter flower crop) by drying them off in the
spring after flowering and letting them get thoroughly cooked in the
greenhouse 'til about now. We'll sort them out this week or next and
pot all the flowering sized corms 5 to a 5inch pot and put them
outside 'til frost threatens. Doing that, we seem to have lost most of
the yellows which seem to be the most fragrant. We keep growing a few
from seed and they give us an autumn crop of flowers in their first
year.
Dunno how the commercial growers get those huge flowers with 6mm thick
stems, I prefer my thin wiry bent stems - they look much nicer in a
vase. Well that's my excuse anyway and I'm sticking to it.
Rod

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Freesia question
 

On Fri, 16 Jul 2004 11:52:17 GMT, Mike Fitzpatrick wrote:

My wife planted in large pots last autumn a load of Freesia bulbs. this year
we have had a fantastic display,cut and taken indoors for vases. What is the
procedure to get the same show next year? do I leave them in the pots and
over winter them in the greenhouse or leave them out. Any advise please will
be gratefully accepted.

An elderly gentleman, a gardener all his working life, now long
dead, told me years ago to grow new freesias from seed every
year. He overwintered his in a sheltered coldframe that he
covered with matting during spells of sub-freezing weather.


--
Rodger Whitlock
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
[change "atlantic" to "pacific" and
"invalid" to "net" to reply by email]

Freesia question
 

On Sat, 17 Jul 2004 18:08:21 GMT, lid
(Rodger Whitlock) wrote:


But you have to wonder if scent is harder to breed for? Perhaps
it depends on very few genes. The famous musk plant (Mimulus
moschatus) that lost its scent a hundred years ago may have
simply been a single aberrant plant with a once-off mutation of a
single gene. There've even been those who've combed Oregon
looking for a wild plant with the musk scent, but none has ever
been found.

Might be that or ignored in favour of big showy flowers. The breeders
seem to be getting scent back into commercial pot plant lines of
Cyclamen persicum now. I understand typical C. persicum is scented.
Several of the F1 series we grow now are scented but not yet any of
the really large flowered ones.
Rod

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