Drilling holes for Gladioli

Anyone who has read my post on what I bought at Hampton court will know that come spring next year I am to receive a slightly terrifying delivery of forty Gladiolus bulbs.  What you won't know is that I actually had a little foray into growing them this year.  Back in the early spring I was in the garden centre when a packet of Gladioli bulbs was thrown into the trolley, shortly followed by another as I threw caution to the wind, but being my second favourite flower its not surprising I couldn't resist.

The varieties I bought were: Passos and Wine and roses.  Not exactly a match made in heaven but I love a good clashing colour combination so I didn't let that hold me back.  In the front garden is a rather large fuchsia hogging a lot of space without exactly adding much to the overall ambience of the garden.  That was hacked back and the resulting area has become my gladiolus patch for the year.  I don't plan on leaving the bulbs there indefinitely, and now I have bought a thousand more I might need to just completely jettison these altogether.

You can tell our compost is home made a fruit label has snuck in my hole with the corns

Here I am planting the bulbs on the moon.  No I jest, this is the front garden.  Look at that soil!  Isn't it beautiful?  Soft and crumbly and beyond easy to dig holes.... but only when using a pick axe.  That isn't a joke by the way; we have had to use a pickaxe in the past to break up the soil.  Every time I buy a plant the mother reminds me I will have to dig a hole and Im like ‘yeah yeah thats fine!’  Five minutes of hole digging as the sweat runs down my brow and Im blowing I regret those purchases. As I write this I have literally just finished planting 3 plants out there which took about two hours, mainly because I had to dig one hole 3 times as I got almost deep enough only to find a cracking great root.  That plant nearly stayed in the pot and even now is not really deep enough but it’s lucky to be there at all!  I chose to ignore the advice on the packets and look to the gardener Sarah Raven for guidance.  On her website she suggests a depth of 8 inches and uses a bulb planter.  Oh Sarah, 8 inches?  Clearly she has soil where 8 inches is achievable in under 40 minutes of digging, I don't think I managed more than 6 and it was hard graft, reduced to four by the time I put a layer of manure in the bottom for when the corns get hungry.  I also decided to dig trenches rather than individual holes which also proved to be a mistake.  Sarah advices planting the bulbs in succession to provide staggered flowering which I did do, less for the flowering and more because I would have keeled over and died if I had to plant them all at once.

The slugs have provided aeration in my leaves

So this was a few months ago and I have waited and watched the leaves sprout and grow and be devoured into threads by slugs because evidently they eat absolutely everything, and then waited some more.  We already have gladioli growing in the garden in the form of Alba, a small white variety that is very pretty.  Alba grew, flowered and died and still my leaves remained merely that; leaves.  Clearly Gladiolus are perfectly capable of flowering in my soil, but mine are slow burners. And so the wait continues...

I really am partial to white flowers with green highlights like this one.  Here on the left we have freshly opened and perfect and on the right with delightful crimped edges having been nibbled.  It appears that Gladioli are a particularly tasty plant and no part of it is safe!