September 11, 2016 - Caladiums - Color in the Garden from July through late September

I am a great believer in bulbs in the gardens. They have more permanence than annuals, as well as more versatility than the herbaceous perennial.   What I mean by that is simple. You can move bulbs easily at your whim compared to perennials and some bulbs really take to pot or flower box culture well.

Above is a display of ruby red Postman Joyner Caladiums [those in the right foreground] and white Candidum [in the far background to the upper right].  Also pictured are purple oxalis, wax wing begonias, and assorted hostas.

I have been gardening for years – as a child I would be toddling around behind Daddy in his vegetable garden. Everyone said Daddy had a green thumb; I thought he had TWO green thumbs and that is where I and my two brothers got the “gardening bug”.

I started growing Caladiums about 10 years ago.  They had been on my garden “bucket list”.  I ordered a “Fancy Leaf Caladium” brochure from Happiness Farms, Inc., out of Lake Placid, Florida.   When the brochure arrived early winter in my business mail it got mixed up with another office and it was hand delivered by Attorney Louis Nanney.  He and I worked together closely when we were at the Sunlight Building in Spindale.  He resided upstairs in the front left corner and I resided downstairs in the front left corner.

He came down with title work and the brochure.  We talked gardens.  He was always interested in the flowers or line material in the arrangements I would bring to work to brighten my work space.

He asked about the caladiums.  I told him I had never grown them before – have you?  He offered me some excellent advice having planted them every year for his widowed mother.

He advised, “In this area you plant them Mother’s Day weekend or the week after – the nights have to be warm.  They want warm soil at night.  Don’t plant them too early as they will rot if it is cold and wet.  Sometimes I wait another week if the nights are too cold.”  “How warm?”  He felt 65 degrees was a good marker.  Then he added, “Don’t worry – they will come fast.”

I spent several weeks researching the horticulture and then splurged on 25 jumbo bulbs each of the white Candidum and the ruby red Postman Joyner.   They arrived in mesh sacks with valuable instructions.  I laid them out in cardboard boxes and set them aside in my dining room.  And, then I patiently waited until Mother’s Day.

It is a funny thing about the weather around Mother’s Day – it is a phenomenon here that when you have very warm, sunny weather that you dare to put out the tomatoes early – you get a serious cold snap in a week and have to rush around and cover them many nights.  Same thing around Mother’s Day – fine warm weather that you think is settled – then you stroll out in the evening and discover – GOSH it is cold – 50 degrees!

They have a name for it down here – Blackberry Winter – when the blackberries are in bloom – it feels like winter. 

I waited another week.  I’d made special raised beds that were amended with lots of peat moss, handfuls of bone meal, blood meal, and greensand mixed in.  Every night I went out at dusk to check the weather and if I felt I needed a sweater – I waited.

It was getting middle to late May by then and I was concerned it would take forever to get a nice display.  But, eventually the weather turned warm and “settled” as they say in the gardening books.  I planted the large bulbs about 3 inches deep and 6 inches apart in staggered rows and watered them lightly.  Many of the bulbs had started to show growth and had tips up half inch to one inch at the time I planted them.

Louis had been right – they came fast.  One day you noticed hardly anything, couple of days later you had huge colorful leaves.  About six weeks into it – for the Fourth of July they had good color and two weeks later they were beyond spectacular.  To me they looked like a photo out of the finest of the gardening magazines.  WOW and all I did was enrich the soil, plant the bulbs, then wait.  But, the key was “WAIT” until the soil is warm or they just sit there and do nothing!

In the fall I waited for the leaves to flop over and the nights were getting cool – down into the 60s.  I lifted the bulbs, cut the stems off and allowed them to dry on wire racks in the shade for a few days.  At night I would toss a tarp over them so that they didn’t get coated with the dew every night, then pull off the tarp in the morning when I walked the dog.  When the bulbs were not damp to the touch, I boxed them up.

After the first few years of putting them in the ground I shifted over to large LOW pots and flower boxes.  I found that method much easier and quicker to plant and quicker to get up in the fall.  I can move them slightly here or there to get them into or out of the bright shade or into the deeper shade.  I can control the water more and the fertilizers and soil amendments better. Since I have switched over to flower boxes and pots – they have been even more spectacular.

My first bulb purchase I got about five years out of them until one October it was so wet and so cold so quick they rotted in the ground before I could dig them up.  OH WELL, I sure got a lot of bang for my buck out of them and I bought more.  I ordered the same two varieties because they are show stoppers.

I am on my second run and sometimes the bulbs in the fall are as large as my fist.  I set them upright in box covers [copy paper ream covers work the best I find].  Be sure to mark the inside of the cover the variety and color.  Then I slide the box covers onto the top of my china cabinet or the false tops of my kitchen cabinets which gives them a warm place to rest until next spring when they explode into color for me.

Be sure to keep even the little side bulbs; those little ones really produce lots of leaves and make great pass-alongs to your garden friends.

I highly recommend caladiums as they surely do give you more color for you money than other bulbs!  They give you that wonderful color that is so hard to maintain in our Isothermal Belt here in North Carolina when we have such hot and dry summers.  The leaves are your color – so they are much easier to care for than annuals such as impatients that resent the hot dry winds in August.

Try them; you won’t be disappointed. Don’t be surprised when visitors say, “Wow, you’ve got a green thumb!”

I bought my bulbs from: www.happinessfarms.com

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