Gladioli: how to plant and care for them

Gladioli embellish gardens and balconies with their exuberant flowers. So that the flowers feel really comfortable in the garden beds or in the pots, you can plant gladioli in the ground from the end of April to June.

What soil is suitable for gladioli?

As a rule, in order to plant gladioli, the frost season should have passed.

The soil must be quite permeable, sandy and rich in nutrients. Be sure to plant the bulbs to a depth of 15 cm so that the plants have a stable support.

Are gladioli annual or perennial?

The gladiolus (gladiolus) is a bulbous plant. LThe bulbs should be stored dry in winter and replanted each spring. After flowering, you can dig up the bulbs at the end of October. Simply remove the leaves once they have wilted and trim the stems back to a few inches. Freed from the ground, you can store the bulbs in the basement until next spring.

How to plant gladioli?

The soil is deeply loosened and refined with a little hummus. Heavy soils are mixed with sand or perlite, since the bulb does not like waterlogging. To plant gladioli, a sunny and slightly humid place is selected, without waterlogging.

The bulbs are placed in a hole 15 centimeters from the surface and from other plants. They can also be buried in large pots. You can combine them, either in beds or pots, with other summer flowers, such as dahlias.

You can place a stick next to the bulb to support it, and then tie the flower stems to it. This is especially recommended for large-flowered gladioli, that could break in the wind and rain.

plant new gladioli

These plants have a relatively short flowering time of four to six weeks. To always have new flowers, you should plant the gladioli at different times. Keep in mind that the later they are planted, the later the flower will appear.

You can also extend the flowering period removing faded flowers below. The reason is simple. The goal of every flowering plant is to form seeds for propagation. Removing the resulting seed heads encourages more flowering.

Take advantage of diversity for long flowering

Experts distinguish between early, middle and late species. Consciously combining them makes sense if the flowering period will last from May or June until September, or even until October in temperate regions.

Early varieties include the Byzantine gladiolus (Gladiolus communis ssp. byzantinus) and the Illyrian gladiolus (Gladiolus illyricus)that They bloom from June to July.

When early varieties slowly stop producing flowers, medium-sized gladioli such as common gladiolus (Gladiolus communis) getting alive

One of the last representatives of the gladiolus for the garden, which blooms until September, it is the butterfly gladiolus(Gladiolus papilio).

If the plant doesn’t bloom…

They are not really complicated plants, but sometimes bulbous flowers just don’t bloom. The following reasons are responsible for this:

The young shoots of the plant They froze.They are in a place that is too shady. The gladiolus has been overfertilized and it only grows a lot of foliagethe ground has become waterlogged.

Preplant the bulbs

If you want the gladioli to bloom earlier, you can preplant them. For it fill small pots with regular potting soil in March and place the bulbs in them.

They should only be two-thirds covered. Put them on the sunny windowsill and accustom them to outdoor conditions from mid-April, if there is no frost.

Always you should bring the pot indoors overnight until danger of frost has passed. Plant the gladiolus in the garden or pot as usual in mid to late May.

If you overwinter the tubers, you should check them starting in February or March. If they are already beginning to sprout, then pre-cultivation is recommended.

Overwinter the bulbs

To spend the winter, gladiolus plants, like dahlias, they must be dug up and the bulbs must be freed from the clinging soil.

The leaves should remain on the plant until they wither. This allows the bulb to store the energy it contains. Once withered, they are cut to a few centimeters.

It is best to spend the winter wrapped in newspaper in a dark and frost-free place. Air out the bulbs during the winter so they don’t rot.

With proper storage, you will be able to plant the gladioli again next spring and enjoy the graceful inflorescences.

Also pYou can make them spend the winter in a mixture of sand and dry earth, which is placed in a box, this keeps the bulbs at a good temperature and dry.

For hibernation, it is advisable to classify the types and colors if you do not want the garden to be variegated with the same colors after hibernation.

The optimal temperature for gladiolus bulbs to spend the winter is 10ºC