snowdrops in the woodland garden

Our Woodland Garden is a little over a year old.

After the ground was cleared of brambles and nettles and the dead and diseased trees had been removed, we set out a log edged path and planted dogwood, holly, Christmas Box, firethorn and cotoneaster.

These young shrubs were underplanted with the snowdrops we had propagated by division from a clump found growing around a Beech tree at the end of the Cedar walk.

One year on, the snowdrops are paying us back with a beautiful display of nodding white flowers. We've continued our propagation-by-division strategy and have a bed of snowdrops ready for transerring into the woodland garden as soon as they have finished flowering.

I did try a second propagation strategy: that was 'scale division'.

bulbs propagated by scale division

I sliced snowdrop bulbs and allowed them to create their own tiny bulblets in a dark drawer. And it worked!! Today I planted fifteen small snowdrops around the base of our owl sculpture. I will water them with dilute leachate from our wormery in the hope that they bulk up this spring and then add to the drifts of pretty little flowers in 2014.

propagating snowdrops from scale division

The delicate, down-turned, white nodding heads of snowdrops (galanthus nivalis) are traditionally the first garden plants to flower each year. Snowdrops are not considered to be native to the British Isles but are introductions. Nevertheless, their simple flowers give easy access to pollen and nectar for early flying insects and so they have an important part to play in helping wildlife. The pollen collected by bees from snowdrops is red.

Our plan is to fill our Woodland Garden beds with snowdrops where they will contrast especially well with the red stems of dogwood (cornus alba).

Established snowdrops self-seed and will hybridise readily. Plants should, therefore, increase in number over time due to the growth of seedlings and through vegetative reproduction as new bulbs are formed. To speed this process they are most frequently and effectively propagated by dividing clumps of bulbs after flowering has finished. Divided clumps should be fed with a general purpose fertiliser such as pelleted organic chicken manure ... and well watered. Dividing and replanting snowdrops gives plants extra vigour. They can be expected to flower abundantly the spring following transplanting.

In April of last year I tried propagating snowdrops by scale division - a technique new to me.


I took dormant bulbs and made thin sliced segments ensuring that each segment had a sliver of basal plate attached. The segments were placed into a sealed bag of vermiculite and left to allow tiny bulbs to form.

By August many of these had formed, and I placed them into a tray of dampened potting compost and waited to see what would happen....

The result was success as you can see; although not a resounding success with only five eleven new plants.

I will try the operation again this year and make fewer segments from each bulb. I will also ensure that my sharp knife is properly sterilised during each cut.

This is an especially useful technique if you wish to increase your stock of plants from a limited number of bulbs.

a small price to pay for progress with scale division or chippings.....

As some of my gender become older, they do become odder. I've observed this.


Fortunately I am not tainted with this weakness and stand as a beacon for others to guide themselves towards. As if to confirm this picture of myself, Shabnum described me (jokingly) as her 'guru ji'. I have always had a half-formed picture of myself in later years emulating the great Indian leader with little hair and dressed in nappy masticating brown rice between wizened gums. Ooops - I digress.

For the record, it is normal to keep slivers of snowdrop (galanthus) bulbs in vermiculite inside a tied plastic bag. Ones T shirt drawer is an obvious place to keep these slivers in the dark as they each develop their own tiny bulb that will be nurtured into a snowdrop to flower beautifully in two or three years' time.

This grainy photo shows that the system works. The tiny bulblet is curling away from the basal plate.

Okay, the bag does lend a certain earthy, mustiness with a hint of decay to otherwise clean clothing, but that is a small price to pay.

Isn't it.

What?

scale division or cuttings

Chance to try out an idea that is new to me: taking what I think are called 'scale cuttings'. Gardening presenter Carol Klein had briefly demonstrated the technique in her 'cottage garden' TV series and so I was waiting for the chance to try it out.
The idea is to propagate new snowdrops by taking making divisions of snowdrop bulbs that will each go on to become healthy snowdrops in the future.


Here's what I did.


I took snowdrops that were completely dormant and cleaned the  bulbs so that there was no skin left.


I then sliced the bulbs lengthways with a sharp, clean knife so that part of the basal plate remained attached to each slice. Some bulbs were sliced into eight, others into fewer divisions as I tried the technique out.


I then put the slices into a plastic bag of vermiculite and tied the top of the bag. Finally, I placed the bag into a dark drawer.


There are bragging rights at stake: my dad is also trying the technique and to make it fair we are using vermiculite from the same source and snowdrops from the same clump.

Why do men have to make even something like this competitive??? I'm not proud.