> Next: Bulb Propagation Demonstrated
Growing More Bulbs
Propagation Explained
Propagating bulbs uses several methods to reproduce favorite bulbs and make new hybrids that have traits of both their parent bulbs.
Those who wish to grow new plants from their own bulbs will find it simple to harvest offsets, divide rhizomes, and separate tubers, creating new plants.
Whether to Propagate Bulbs
Let’s start by saying that most gardeners will find bulb propagating unnecessary. After all, there’s a ready and varied supply of fresh, healthy bulbs available each year from garden stores, nurseries, and online sellers.
To have the exact flowers you want, bulb breeders do all of the work. They cross-hybridize thousands of bulbs each year, choosing only the best to send to market. Most are patented plants, and reproducing them is banned.
For most who seek exactly the bulb they want, bulbs that grow well in their climate and have the look and colors they want, these “cream of the crop” breeder choices are exact fits for their needs.
Still, there’s something exciting about watching nature perform its miracles. In the end, whether to propagate bulbs yourself is up to you.
Commercial Bulb Growers
Growers carefully develop new bulb varieties, called “hybrid cultivars,” by sexual reproduction.
They dust pollen from one parent plant’s flower’s male anthers onto the female stigma of another bulb. This produces entirely new bulbs in a magical and somewhat unpredictable process.
Breeders produce many thousands of these new bulbs each season, but most destined for obscurity.
Only a few of their hybrids, plus even fewer”sports”—random genetic mutations— end up cultured and distributed for gardeners to buy and plant.
Techniques Breeders Use
Breeders choose parent plants with specific genetic traits, such as those with unusual blooms, striking color, disease and pest resistance, or cold hardiness. Their unique features make them ideal for reproduction and propagation.
Growers also use plant-tissue culture, gene splicing, and other advanced techniques. These are necessary to clone exact duplicates of the most promising bulbs.
But all of these steps take time, and the time adds up. It may take a dozen years or more before a new hybrid bulb is available for gardeners to grow in their yards.
Bulb Propagation at Home
Home gardeners use many methods to produce clones and hybrids of their favorite bulbs.
It’s relatively easy to harvest offsets of bulbs after they naturally divide. It’s also simple to divide rhizomes and tubers. Both produce fresh plants from old favorites.
Propagation also includes techniques that require greater patience and skill.
Other Reproduction Techniques
Lily Bulbils
Some lily plants, for instance, grow bulbils in their leaf axils—the point where their leaves join their stems.
Culture bulbils to grow new individual plants by planting them in a special way, rearing them, and allowing them to mature into new lily plants.
Stem Cuttings
Create new plants of tuberous begonia and dahlia by taking stem cuttings of fresh shoots, rooting them, and allowing them to form bulbs.
Planting Seed
Grow new hybrid bulbs from seeds gathered from ripening flowers.
When a flower stalk remains on the bulb after its bloom fades, it swells and develops seed. The offspring grown from these seed are not the same as their parent.
They are, instead, a cross-hybrid of the original parent mated with pollen from another of the same or a closely related species.
These hybrids have growth habits, bloom colors, and forms that are different than the parent plants—sort of the same as how children look similar to, but different than, either of their parents.
Growing Bulbs from Seed
Try your hand at raising new hybrid bulbs from seed collected from mature flowers of bulbs you grow.
Harvesting and culturing bulb seed is a bit challenging. With experience, however, you’ll easily master it.
Start by allowing seedpods the develop after your bulbs’ flowers fade to grow, turn brown, and become brittle.
Next, collect them. Crack each pod open over a sheet of clean, white paper. When they break, they’ll release their tiny seeds.
Then, you’ll need to cure them. Gather, label and store the seeds in individually sealed containers or glassine envelopes in the vegetable keeper of a household refrigerator for 2 months.
Finally, remove them from the refrigerator, and plant them. They need loose, rich, moist, sterile potting soil.
Keep them moist as they grow roots, under glass or another transparent, moisture-trapping cover. Hold their container at a temperature of 62–75°F (16–24°C).
The seeds will sprout in one to two weeks, first producing two-leaved sprouts, then leaves similar to other bulbs of their species.
Uncover them, watering whenever the soil starts to dry. Transplant them outdoors in spring. Lift the tiny bulbs at the end of the season and store them indoors over the winter.
Patience is needed. It may take 1–3 years before they mature and produce their first flowers.