Subject: RE: Drimia: Another day - another theory!

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		Diane Whitehead

Begin forwarded message:


From: "Anthony Lyman-Dixon" <Lyman@lyman-dixon.freeserve.co.uk>


Hullo everyone,

Thanks for all the advice on Drimia (still Urginea in the UK trade and
likely to remain so for the rest of my lifetime), though I wish I had
seen it last year when I managed to get a dozen bulbs after years of
trying. They are amazingly resilient so I hope other UK residents
haven't been frightened off by a description of their ideal
conditions.
I put my bulbs into a mixture of Sinclair commercial alpine compost and 
Cornish grit in five litre pots in our driest tunnel and they started
sprouting at the beginning of October. By the new year I realised that
in spite of all my efforts to keep them dry, the tops were still going
mushy and relentlessly attacked by slugs. This makes them vulnerable if lying on the surface, obviously in dry rocky conditions, the slug damage 
is less likely.

So I took the mushiest, sickest looking of the lot and stuck them in a
10 litre pot and left them outside from April onwards in the wettest
Summer we have had since the eighteenth century to see what would
happen.
Stimulated by this thread I looked at them last week, expecting to find 
nothing except  a slushy mess but was amazed to find that each one had
put down thick white roots through the bottom of the pot and was
flourishing, but is spite of the vigour of the roots, they still
hadn't pushed the top of the bulb above the surface. Could this be a response 
to their soggy, sunless and slug-ridden environment? Meanwhile the
others, still inside the tunnel, have just begun to shoot and inspite of 
being half covered in a rampant mix of mint and puslane, look far
healthier than they did last year. Whether they will eventually flower 
under these conditions I have no idea, but they would have seen little
sun this summer whether left on the surface or not.

Definitely worth a try even in our less than ideal conditions

Anthony
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