I just finished planting 300 anemones to bloom early next spring, and I have 200 ranunculus ready to go in the ground soon, so I'll have lots of wow factor flowers for spring. I always try not to get too carried away when I order bulbs and corms, so this year I only ordered 5 varieties total. But that means 500 corms, because minimum orders are 100 per variety. That’s typical for large-scale suppliers, where we get the best prices.
The secret to these beautiful spring flowers is to pre-sprout them. When I was a home gardener, I didn’t know that grower’s trick, so my success was hit and miss. Some years I planted the dry little corms and got very few flowers. But when we took Floret’s online flower farming course, we learned valuable secrets like this.
Pre-sprouting is simple. You soak the corms in water for 3-5 hours, then place them in a tray of damp seed mix soil (recipe below), cover them thinly and keep them in a cool place for a couple of weeks. I use the floor of my unheated garage. This process will encourage roots to sprout. If you plant them outside after they show good root growth (not before!), you’re likely to have success. I’ve covered this process in more detail here.
Anemones bloom first (at least they do here in California, zone 9b). The corms don’t look promising at all – they’re hard lumps in irregular shapes. Ranunculus corms look like tiny octopuses. This year my anemones will be Galilee White, Galilee Red and Meron Blue. I’ve grown the Galilee series before, and they performed well; the Meron type is new to me. My ranunculus will be Elegance Pastelo (new to me) and Amandine Gold, a variety I’ve had success with. The corms are pre-sprouting right now and I’ll plant them in raised beds as soon as I see roots. Spring is going to be full of beautiful flowers!
Clockwise from top left: A mixed bouquet of ranunculus from Tiny Footprint Flowers; Anemone Galilee Red; Anemone Galilee White (both Galilee photos from Leo Berbee, our corm supplier); Elegance Pastelo ranunculus.
Seed-Starting Soil Recipe
We use this for seeds, but also for rooting mum cuttings and for pre-sprouting corms of anemones and ranunculus. Mix everything well in a large container with a lid. If you’ll use it fairly quickly, you can wet the entire lot in the container. This mixture takes a while to take up water, and you want it damp when you use it.
4 parts compost (see note below)
2 parts peat moss (see note below)
1 part vermiculite
1 part Perlite
Compost - Not all compost is the same; some has lots of twigs that are annoying to work around, and we’ve had some that grew tiny mushrooms. We don’t make enough of our own compost to use it for this mix, we always buy bags from a nursery or Home Depot. Find a good source near you and stick to it.
Peat moss - We’ve never tried coir, but maybe it could be substituted for peat moss.
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