[pbs] Babiana angustifolia and where things can grow
Mary Sue Ittner
msittner at mcn.org
Fri Dec 29 17:02:00 EST 2006
Dear Joe,
I live in an area where many Babianas can be grown in the ground and
neglected. They increase and bloom well for me, at least many species from
the southwestern Cape do. I do less well with species needing alkaline soil
or ones from very dry climates. My experience is that they do better with
deeper pots or planted out. At least I didn't get reliable blooming with
most of the ones I grew in pots, six inches deep. I have nine inch deep
pots in my raised beds and they are quite happy in these. I think carefully
moving them might be helpful, but a gallon pot might be o.k. for young
plants. People on this list from colder climates have reported in the past
difficulty growing Babianas. Light frost doesn't seem to be a problem, but
I don't know at what stage the cold would get them. I rarely fertilize mine
so don't know if they would grow better with light fertilizing. In our
Mediterranean type climate they die down in late spring/ early summer and
start growing again in the fall. They are corms and don't have perennial
roots. Some species seem tolerant of a little summer water. But it should
be fine to move them inside and dry them out in summer. I think they would
also do better in the sun although I do have a few that bloom in areas that
were once sunny and are no longer because the trees are bigger.
I don't think I've mentioned in awhile that there was an Ortho book , All
About Bulbs, written in 1986 where they actually asked people who grew
bulbs to give them advice instead of just copying from other bulbs. For
each genus there was an adaptation map of the United States. Dark blue
showed areas where bulbs could be naturalized with normal care. Light blue
showed areas where the bulb could be grown outdoors with precautions (such
as lifting and storing) and uncolored shows areas where the plant would be
difficult to grow as a perennial. I suspect some of this was guesswork.
Since some of the experts giving advice were from California I suspect the
maps might have been more accurate for that state than for others. The map
for Babiana is dark blue for coastal California and Oregon and light blue
for the other parts of Oregon & California, Washington, and the southern
part of the US (although the light blue extends farther north in the
eastern states -- Maryland maybe-- than in the rest of the US.) So Houston
is light blue. The book says Babiana can be grown in rock gardens (check),
borders (check), containers (check, but I'd add deeper is better), alpine
house, house, greenhouse. In my earlier bulb growing I loved this book. It
didn't cost much, but was packed with useful information. In later reprints
they reverted to a book that wasn't nearly as helpful as they had before
this revision appeared. It's fun for me to drag it out every now and then
and see how it fits with my more recent experience. If you look at the maps
in order to find genera that might have species that could be grown easily
outside in most of the United States according to the maps which as I say
were probably best guesses in some instances you'd only find Allium,
Colchicum, Crocus, Hemerocallis, Lilium, Muscari, Narcissus. The more than
100 other genera (sometimes covering only a couple species) discussed won't
grow outside somewhere.
On this list people often report difficulties getting Amaryllis belladonna
to flower. On the map in this book it is dark blue on the western half of
California, the southern parts of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama,
and Georgia, Florida, and the coastal parts of North and South Carolina.
It would seem to me that with such a world wide list it would be an
interesting exercise in hardiness for people to report what was perennial
where they lived. I know Jim Shields tried to get a data base started for
that years ago and only a few contributed so I'm not suggesting we do
this, just that it would be interesting as I suspect there would be surprises.
Mary Sue
More information about the pbs
mailing list