HOW TO OVERWINTER YOUR TENDER BULBS USING THESE FEW STEPS:
- As the weather cools, the foliage on your tender bulbs will begin to turn yellow. This often happens after a light frost but before a hard freeze. Now’s the time to dig them up, before they are damaged by freezing soil.
- Very gently dig your plants by loosing the soil all the way around the plant, several inches or more from the main stem. Use a fork or spade to carefully remove the plant from the ground, making sure not to damage the main bulb or underground food storage structure.
- Clean the bulbs by shaking off the soil and rinsing them. An easy way to rinse them is by laying them on a screen over your compost pile and using a gentle stream of water to wash the soil off the plants and onto the compost pile for recycling.
- Place the bulbs in a dry place out of the sun and wind and not subject to freezing temperatures for a day or two to dry.
- At this point, most bulbs and tubers are ready to store. However, corms such as gladiolus, calla, acidanthera, crocosmia, freesia, tigrida, and tritonia now need a “curing period” of about three more weeks. These corms cure best at warm temperatures up to 85° F and should not be left out in freezing temperatures, so try to coincide this with a spell of warm weather or cure them indoors.
- Sort the bulbs, removing any diseased or shriveled ones.
- Cut off the stems and foliage.
- Treat the bulbs, if you wish, with a fungicide and/or pesticide powder.
Label your plants! In the spring it’s easy to forget what’s what, and it’s impossible to tell what colors you have. With larger roots, you can write the name and color directly on them with a permanent marker, or gently tie on a labeled tag. For smaller ones, you may want to use paper bags (not plastic!) as your storage container, so that you can label each bag.- Fill ventilated containers with a loose storage medium such as peat moss, vermiculite, newspapers, or sawdust. Some gardeners slightly dampen the storage medium, but you don’t want it wet enough to invite mold.
- Layer the bulbs in the storage medium – don’t let them touch each other.
- Put the containers in a cool, dry place around 50° F. A dry, unheated basement, garage, or crawl space is a great spot as long as temperatures stay above freezing.
- Check on your bulbs several times throughout the winter. Throw away any shriveled ones, and remove any packing material that is rotten or moldy. Small rotten spots can be cut away with a sterile, sharp knife. If you see bulbs beginning to wrinkle or look shrunken, mist the packing material with a little water
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