Trena
Trena.
And with that, I’ll stop for now. Hope I didn’t wear you out, but these are a bit early, and it is appealing that someone besides myself be able to enjoy them. It is unlikely they’d be as early another year, as I refrigerate bulbs when I receive them, to bring them forward to the California season, but may have overdone it this year, especially given the low temperatures we had in early December after planting. Things that are 1 year down and more have just begun, with Sobersides the first of the standard non-tazettas to bloom. In the garden, Ice Follies, Juanita, Rapture, Barrett Browning and tazettas are open. Carlton has been open for weeks in the ground. Melissa
Hi,
Do you use a special or different refrigerator for your bulbs? Someone told me that the gasses released by fruit (ethanol?) damage bulbs. How long do you think the bulbs should be refrigerated? Are the bulbs in pots when you refrigerate them?
Curiously, Deb Holland in Newport where the sun is still shining.
—- Melissa M. Reading <
> wrote: ground.
Deb:
wrote:
I have a derelict old double-wide Pepsi fridge that probably spent its glory days in a gas station or convenience store. I got it from Bob Johnson, who got it from another Camellia fancier. It doesn’t have a settable thermostat, but holds around 36 degrees unless the garage gets too hot, as in the summer, when it can go down to 26. The standard NCDS lore is that 3 weeks refrigeration is about right, but some of my bulbs came earlier this year than in prior years, and I planted at the same time, right after Thanksgiving, so the refrigeration period was longer. The bulbs are refrigerated in their vendor-labeled mesh or paper bags, in ventilated trays, or boxes with holes in the sides. If they are too closed up, mold can set in. This year some of the miniatures came sprouted, so I put them into soil-filled berryboxes in a foil lined cardboard box, so that they could grow vertically. At planting time they went into pots. Normally there are no pots in the fridge. It gets pretty full with just bulbs for me and for John.
It is a little like turning bulbs around from the southern hemisphere when we, in our mild California climate, get bulbs from Massachusetts. They need to be accelerated by a couple of months from the pattern to which they’re acclimatized. Clearly, I haven’t mastered the timing yet, or else it’s an unusually early year, as I’d have prefered them to open about March 1. Some other folks had Terminator open about the same time mine did, so perhaps it’s a bit of both. In future years they will bloom later.
Melissa
At 09:36 AM 2/15/2010,