Crocus July, 2019

[Janis Ruksans]

I'm repotting crocuses. At this moment around 25-30% are already repotted. Yesterday worked with veluchensis - all of them already had new roots formed. Some hybrids between veluchensis s.l. and cvijicii had long roots, too. Crop of both species (and of abantensis) was far better than last year - all of them were placed outside of greenhouse early spring as weather conditions allowed. I prepared special place covered with geotextile covered with 5 cm layer of coarse sand (!) - very essential to drain excessive moisture from pots. C. pelistericus, scardicus still are with green leaves. But in the same time noted first flowers of colchicums between old dried yellow leaves. The first runners are Colchicum parnassicum (lilac) and C. paschei (white).

[Janis Ruksans]

Long shoots but still without roots at repotting has Crocus suworovianus. Some samples of gilanicus has long shoots and few are with roots, too.
But due shortening of bulb growing empty places in my ground greenhouse are replaced with apricots, peaches and grapes. Here two Latvian raised hardy varieties with fantastically juicy fruits of perfect taste - apricot VELTA and peach SPURA.

[Janis Ruksans]

Now I'm harvesting species of Crocus speciosus group. Still left all Iranians and type true speciosus. Some already made long shoots and the longest has C. ilgazensis, long shoots has Crocus puringii from Crimea (it already started development of roots, regardless of dust dry soil in pots) and very long shoots has sample from S Turkey LST-420A.
On the last picture are two types of crocus cormlets. It is Crocus brachyphilus (published by me as C. elegans, but nomenclature code...) - on left are grain like cormlets formed on stolones, on right side round cormlets at base of new corm. Both types on same species.
Interesting were observations on Crocus hellenicus populations. The Northern form (type locality of C. hellenicus at Vikos Canyon) is very stoloniferous, but forming few basal cormlets, too. The sample from South near Varnakovo makes no stolones and forms only few basal cormlets. I'm strongly thinking that both could be different taxa, but there must be done DNA checking.
Quite different are crocus seeds - speciosus sensu lato from Balcans and N Turkey has very small seeds, but those from N coast of Black Sea as well as from S Turkey - twice as large, but there still I need data from longer period, may be it is only seasonal.

[Janis Ruksans]

Harvesting, harvesting and harvesting + repotting. Every day from early morning till late evening.
Crop in general good, but I couldn't found positive effects of deeper planting. In some pot deep planted corms grow better, in others not so. Positive effect was with Crocus pulchellus - its corms reached incredible size if planted around 12-15 cm deep, but not always. Really there are more minuses than pluses. At first - practically impossible to take out some wrong plant - they are too deep and more often shoot brokes during attempt to take it out. May be moisture level deep in pot is more even, but sometimes it is too wet even at harvesting time (I'm using plastic pots) and some mould appear at corms bottom between old and new corm. So I returned to my traditional planting depth with very few exceptions - flavus, mouradi, antalyensis, antalyensioides grew far better if planted deep.

Last two days I harvested seedling pots - in general all sawn in 2014, but eldest was from 2008. Usually I'm keeping seedlings in original pot up to first flower and then harvest them. Corydalis erdelii sawn in 2008 bloomed for the first time this spring, but there were plenty of 1-2 year old seedlings, too. So many seeds germinated 10-11 years after sawing.

Seedlings nicely show additional differences between otherwise similar species. Crocus pallasii dry leaves are very easily to pluck off (this species has short neck), but by flower very similar C. macedonicus when you try to pluck its leaves comes out together with young corm and you must use scissors. Crocus "pallasii" from Chios Island is intermediate between both.

[Yann]

I did'nt see any effect planting deep or not in the flowering, but planting in deep pot when growing under glass avoid the bulbs to dry too much during summer.

This year i planted half on my crocus pots in the garden, the trial i made the last 3 years give better result in ground.
However it'll be more difficult to photography when weather is bad 

I never lost crocus for over watering, my main enemy is hot temperature in pot it surely kills bulbs. (and this year is the worst for my collection, 51°c inside the shaded and ventilated greenhouse)

As the weather is getting warmer and warmer, growing under glass will become more challenging for many plants.

I know in Latvia your winters are still cold but here it's no more the case.