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Updated: May 8, 2025
When the roots seem well dried out, put them in paper bags containing perfectly dry sawdust or buckwheat shells, and hang them in a dry place where the frost will not get at them. I would not advise storing them in the cellar, as they generally mould or mildew there. Most varieties increase quite rapidly. You will find several new corms in fall, taking the place of the old one planted in spring.
In late October the plants should be lifted, and spread out in the sunshine to ripen. Do not cut the stalks away until you are ready to store the corms. Then cut off each stalk about two inches from its junction with the corm.
Often there will be scores of little fellows the size of a pea, clustered about the larger corms. These should be saved, and planted out next spring. Sow them close together in rows, as you would wheat. The following year they will bloom. So extensively is the Gladiolus grown at the present time that enough to fill a good-sized bed can be bought for a small sum.
Beyond putting the corms in the ground, in spring, and an occasional weeding as the plant develops, very little attention is required. To secure the best effect from it, the Gladiolus should be planted in masses. Single specimens are far less satisfactory. One must see fifty or a hundred plants in a bed ten or fifteen feet long to fully appreciate what it is capable of doing.
Where the snow lies deepest in winter, there shall you find the greatest flush of new life in the spring. Down under the snow Nature's chemical laboratory is at work. Take a stick and dig under the thick white blanket into the black soil. Here are bulbs and buds, corms and tubers, rootstalks and rhizomes, which were pumped full of starch and albumen in the hot days of last August.
If you prefer to stake the beds, set the stakes in rows about two feet apart. Wire or cord need not be stretched on them until the stalks are half grown. The reason for setting the stakes early in the season is you know just where the corm is then, but later on you will not be able to tell where the new corms are, and in setting the stakes at random you are quite likely to injure them.
Commercial fertilizers seem to suit it well, but the use of barnyard manure gives excellent results, and I would prefer it, if obtainable. The corms should be put about four inches below the surface, care being exercised at the time of planting to see that they are right side up.
At last Austin, waiting behind a door, heard her enter her room to dress. Very gently he stole out with something in his pocket, and two minutes afterwards was standing on the lawn with his straw hat tilted over his eyes, chattering with Lubin about tubers, corms, and bulbs, potting and bedding-out, and other pleasant mysteries of garden-craft.
The corms of these early-blooming species are less resistant than those of the summer-blooming kinds and can rarely be kept over winter in good condition. The species in this class are many, several are fragrant, and all are worth growing by the specialist for their individual charm, but few are likely to attain commercial importance in this country for a considerable time.
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