Are the gladioli flowering in your garden?

My gladioli are ways behind and I wonder if that is down to the drought or a first sign that we could get a long cold winter as it was 2020/2021.

 

Dug mine out last year and missed the odd one. One is flowering others will soon. Very pretty it is too.

 

Ours we moved when they weren't doing well and have never had them flower since! We get the foliage but that is it.

 

Mine all flowered weeks ago and have now died back completely.

 

They do need sunlight and moisture, minimal nitrogen moderate phosphorous so apply bone meal when preparing beds.Don't always flower in first year

 

Thanks a lot for your confirmation that you have flowering gladioli.

 

I can remember when it was considered normal to lift these at the end of summer and dry them off for planting the following spring.
So they usually flowered in the first year.
Following years was always the hit and miss part depending on how you treated them.

 

Mine just starting to flower I kept the corms in the fridge , planted some every 10 days to get staggered flowering

 

My ones are in the ground since May 2016 and have always flowered. Maybe I will buy new bulbs in spring next year.

 

You've done well to get 10 years out of them. They don't do more than 2 or 3 years here then they gradually decline. I expect the soil's too dry and not rich enough for them.

 

It's wet clay soil that we have, apart from this summer when it's dry clay soil.

 

Gladioli usually flower best the first year they are planted, then it is luck whether they flower again. It is considered best to lift the corms at the end of the summer, dry them out and store until Spring. I have found the corms often produce zillions of bulbils, reducing the size of the mother corm. Flowering time varies with variety, I planted some in the garden last year, left them in over the winter and I have had 2 pickings from them. I treat them as annuals and bin them after flowering.

 

All the gladioli in my present garden were in situ when I moved here some 5 years ago. They flower well every year and I've never considered lifting, storing and then replanting.

 

I received some as free plants with a bulb order and then also found some on offer at an end of season sale. They're all planted at the end of the dahlia border and all flower well tho they finished a few weeks ago now.

They are left in the ground all winter, get an occasional watering via seep hose when it's very hot and dry and a handful or three of pelleted chicken manure in spring. I dead head them as soon as the flowers go over. I don't cut them for the house but grow them for pollinators.