Tecophilaea 2010

[Eric Locke]

Hi

Season is well under way with these now.

Here is Leichtlinii and another of Kath Drydens hybrids not shown before Cumulus.

Eric

[Luc Gilgemyn]

Lovely sight Eric !
They are the most dramatic blue in the business in my opinion. 

[Eric Locke]

Lovely sight Eric !
They are the most dramatic blue in the business in my opinion. 

Also not difficult, or as expensive as they once were.

Eric

[Sinchets]

Not quite Tecophilaea but a Californian in the same family, this is my first flowering of Odontostomum hartwegii. Up close you can see the resemblance to Cyanella in the form of the flowers.

[Mark Griffiths]

hopefully in the right order

the type plant, not so good this year..I let it set seed last year and gave over a hundred seeds to the botanical gardens in the hope they would give me a hyacynthus orientalis chionophyllus in return (which they have lots of, they even have it planted out)..which they then just, on reminding(!) said thank you and took the lot. This year the seeds will go to the AGS seed list.

Leichtlinii

violacea..the latter I have split into several pots..you'll see I have rogue type plant mixed in..all four or five pots have the type plant as it is more vigorous, I've tied bits of twine around them now so hapefully next year I will have unmixed pots.

[Rodger Whitlock]

violacea..the latter I have split into several pots..you'll see I have rogue type plant mixed in..

Use a very narrow digging implement (say, a widger) and move the rogue bulb to the proper pot now. I had a rogue in one of my own tecophilaea pots and did this. The transplanted bulb seems to have survived the move without any difficulty. If you wait until the bulbs are dormant, the rogue may have formed offsets and your T. violacea stock will be more contaminated than it is now.

[Jean-Patrick AGIER]

Hi Eric,
Here are my very first Tecophilea flowers ( not a panfull ...). They were just EXTRAORDINARY!!!
But do I need to feed them before they go dormant?
J-P

[Rodger Whitlock]

Here are my very first Tecophilea flowers ( not a panfull ...). They were just EXTRAORDINARY!!!
But do I need to feed them before they go dormant?

I certainly would. My tecophilaeas have finished flowering, but the foliage is still green, so they got a feed of dilute 6-24-24 last week. I'll try to give them at least one more feed before the foliage begins to yellow.

Many years ago when I built my first "serious" coldframe, I filled it with sand and plunged 4" terra cotta pots in it, many of them containing crocus seedlings. The seedlings faithfully came up in the spring but no flowers. After a year or two of this, I finally thought to feed them — just once. Next spring, the majority flowered for the first time.

There is a chain of improper logical deductions that lead many to think that bulbs like lean soil. It goes something like this:

Bulbs like warm, dry summer conditions → sand is dry → bulbs like sand (wrong!) → sand is a lean soil → bulbs like lean living (wrong!). Some variants work "bulbs like well-drained conditions" in there somewhere.

In point of fact, the mere presence of a fleshy storage organ filled with starch tells us that bulbs, in general, need pretty good living during active growth. You can't build up those reserves from nothing!

Of course, some bulbs do like sand (notably crocuses) and lean living, but as a general rule, a soil of good body and fertility is the best.

So feed those tecophllaeas. Low nitrogen, but not zero nitrogen.

A highly reputable authority on South American bulbs says that tecophilaea prefers a circumneutral soil, neither very acidic nor very alkaline, and enjoys a dry, but cool, summer rest — in the shade under the house eaves, iow.

[Maggi Young]

Our Tecos get some bonemeal in the potting mix, which gives them a little nitrogen and then are fed sulphate of potash later in growth.

[Jean-Patrick AGIER]

Hi,
Many thanks for your useful advice. So I'll feed
J-P