All the Dirt on Gardening

Yesterday I described what lily bulb scales are and how to make more lilies with just the scales. When the scales form tiny bulbs in damp vermiculite or seed starting mix, it is time to plant them. Fill a tray with sterile planting soil. Be sure the container has drainage holes.  I planted the lily scales in two trays of moistened potting soil. Each rooted basal plate was given its own small pot. At the end, I had several scales left so I stuck one in each of the pots, too.  The planting trays were topped with clear plastic lids and moved into a place where they would get filtered light but not direct sunlight.   We'll find out together how this adventure ends!

 Lily scales in a plastic bag with dampened vermiculite and seed starting mix. Pinch the opening, blow into the bag and seal with a twist tie. Keep away from sunlight.  After 3 weeks, dump out the bag contents and sort it out, removing the scales and spoiled bits from the starting mixture.  After removing all the outer scales, I put the central basal plate into the bag to see what would happen and they rooted.  Here's a typical lily scale with a bulbil growing off the basal plate end. I tucked a few slices of daffodil bulb into the bag to see what they would do and they all turned to mush. About 25% of the lily scales were mushy on their growing tips. About 25% of the lily scales did not grow a bulbil.

Plants multiply by making seed, spreading their roots, adding rhizomes and multiplying bulbs. One way to tell if a lily or daffodil needs to be divided is that it has fewer flowers or seems to be healthy only around the outer edges of a clump. Lilies are very good at making copies of themselves. Toward the end of the flowering season there are tiny lily seeds all along the stem and when the bulbs are dug up, there will be more bulbs under-ground than were originally planted. In addition, between the bulb in the ground and the surface of the soil, stem bulblets will be growing along the underground stem. Now that lilies have bloomed and faded, we can dig up the bulbs and divide them to share or to re-plant. There are a few common methods you can use. After digging, remove the roots of the bulb, being careful to not cut into the basal plate. The basal plate looks like the bottom of an onion and bulb scales are like layers of an onion. Any bulbils and bulblets in the soil...