Chipping/Twin-scaling type question

[Maggi Young]

Deafening silence to your question , Lydia -  I was sure someone must have an opinion on this matter .........

[RichardW]

I've been using this for several years, it's available in many garden centers or online from Amazon etc.

http://www.bayergarden.co.uk/Products/s/Systhane-Fungus-Fighter.aspx

[chasw]

Yes I use the same as Richard,although not a lot of success this year 

[Brian Ellis]

Sorry this one went under the radar.  I think any fungicide you would use for tomatoes etc would be fine.  Whatever you can lay your hands on!

[RichardW]

Yes I use the same as Richard,although not a lot of success this year 

Ditto, didn't do anything different & I'll be experimenting this year, despite always using a sealed bag I think sterilizing the vermiculite in the oven might be worth trying. Spoke to someone last year who said they don't use fungicides at all so I will be picking their brains.

very frustrating when you end up with pots of mush 

[Maggi Young]

Ian doesn't use any fungicides unless he sees some problem beginning, when he will add some sulphur powder.

[emma T]

I tried not using fungicide .......had a lovely bag of blueish mold instead of happy snowdrop chips

[RichardW]

I think the weakest link must be the vermiculite. I've stuck very carefully to the method I found to have a very high success rate for years and lost most of them last year, not sure what else it can be other than the medium.

[snowdropcollector]

I think it is wise to use different fungicides every time. If you use the same everytime, they get used to it. I mean resistance.
Saprol ( often for sale on Ebay) and Switch are two good fungicides also.

[RichardW]

Worth trying in the long term, but I haven't yet chipped any previously chipped bulbs.

[snowdropcollector]

Maybe a stupid question  , but is growing bullips very different from growing seeds ? I have no experience with growing any
chippings or chipping itself.

For growing seeds, I do not use Vemiculite at all. Only lot of Perlite in the soil. You can give plenty water mixed with what you want.
Perlite does not take anything, it just brings lot of drainage in your mix.
The only thing is that you have to water regular !!

And the Perlite makes is difficult to find your one year old little bulps.....

[chasw]

Yes,Richard we talked about sterilising the vermiculite earlier,think I will put mine in the oven for a while(while Jan is out that is) before using it this year,

[Maggi Young]

Maybe a stupid question  , but is growing bullips very different from growing seeds ? I have no experience with growing any
chippings or chipping itself.

For growing seeds, I do not use Vemiculite at all. Only lot of Perlite in the soil. You can give plenty water mixed with what you want.
Perlite does not take anything, it just brings lot of drainage in your mix.
The only thing is that you have to water regular !!

And the Perlite makes is difficult to find your one year old little bulps.....

Perlite, or sometimes vermiculite is used  as the medium to put chipped bulb sections into when trying to increase the propagation rate by the method of cutting the bulbs into small pieces , to encourage the production of baby bulbs in the cut pieces - this  can provide a much faster increase in some cases than "natural" vegetative  increase.  Perlite is a reasonably "clean" material to use and is more or less, as I understand it, inert, so there are fewer problems with contamination of the growing pieces from rots. The cut pieces are put in plastic bags or boxes in the perlite, which has only a VERY small amount of moisture in it, and put in a warm  dark place - sometimes the warm "laundry" cupboard of a house -  to wait for the baby bulbs to grow.   It is not so hard t find those babies  inthe perlite as it would be to find dormant baby bulbs ( grown from seed ) in perlite, because they have the longer piece of the mother bulb attached to them .

This explanation may  not be perfect - but I hope it helps!

[RichardW]

I stopped using perlite years ago, too dusty! the bag really needs to be soaked before use so it's not ideal if you want to keep a sterile medium. Not sure how well perlite would work as a medium for chipping but it's not something I would use.

Vermiculite is just a cleaner, easier to use product IMO, finding the chips months later can be tricky!

[Brian Ellis]

I think the other important thing is to thoroughly sterelize the blade and surface you cut on between each bulb (or preferably use a different blade for each one).