CULT: baked & buried rhizomes

Hello Folks,

All this talk of steamed and baked rhizomes almost made me
hungry for chicken fried steak, steamed cabbage and baked
potato.  Good thing I don't cook supper -- or at all if I can help
it.

Anyway, some of the advice I got at the convention included baking
rhizomes of scorch victims and then replanting.  One fellow even told
me he put his in a dehydrator and then planted them and had 100%
success, so he did another batch and over dehydrated them and gave
up that particular method.  Something about the odor, as I recall.
Mr. Silverberg, on the other hand, suggested burying the rhizomes
6" deep.  Another man said to lay them out in the hot sun for 10 days
and then replant.  Something about high temps killing the organism
causing scorch.

Sooooo, I've been experimenting with the above (except dehydrators -
don't cook, so don't have one).  Actually, I've done a combination of
the above.  I've simply buried some, I've baked directly in the hot sun
and replanted and I've baked and buried the same rhizome(s).  The
initial indications are that these methods are going to work on some
of the victims.  This week (with a couple of rare rains and some very
welcome cooler weather), I have fans emerging on several.  On one
or two which now have fans, I would have bet against ever seeing anything
green again.  VIOLET DAWSON and SHONDO were to all appearances
completely gone as far as any fan growth indicated.  The rhizomes on
either didn't look all that good either, but both have now emerged with
fans.  SHONDO has four.  At least nine cultivars treated in the above
manner are sending up fan growth.  Probably a bit more than half of the
treated ones.  Some still need to be done and on the last batch set out
to bake I may not have much success since I discovered grasshoppers
will eat the growing point and rhizome all if I leave them baking now.
This discovery probably came too late to salvage several.  So now I'm
wondering if sticking them in a hot garage for a few days will do the
baking, since there are several I haven't touched yet.  I would say at
this point those baked are responding better than simply raw.  Burying
depths varied, but those growing best were at a minimum completely
cut off from sunlight by a soil cover.  Those that were both baked, then
buried are growing faster.  'Course all this may come to naught when
our Texas summer kicks in again and the grasshoppers have kept 
them mowed to the soil level over a period of time.  Still, it has been
encouraging and I hope not to have to replace every rhizome in order
to see a bloom on a variety I've wanted to see bloom.

Donald Eaves
donald@eastland.net
Texas Zone 7, USA with apologies for the long post.


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