Kirk - I may be a bit warmer than you, but I'm going to plant mine this weekend. I may plant 500 now and wait 2 weeks to plant the other 500, just so they don't bloom all at once! I also don't dig mine up for the winter, they seem to do just fine, but I do plant at 4".

Wendy

Kirk,
If Wendy doesn't dig hers up, then don't plant when she does! I am zone 5, and the last frost date is around June 1st, but can be later. I am not planting glads until the middle of May, that way by the time they're up, there shouldn't be any frost. I plan on doing more 2 weeks after that. You may be able to do yours a little earlier.
Cheryl

Can I ask what you guys would do in this case? I had the worst thrips ( my first thrips actually) ever in my glads last year. Only two putrid blooms out of about 50. There is no way I want those suckers in my nearby dahlias, or my glads again.
There was talk last Fall on this forum about digging them and dipping in 160 degree water or such, but I didn't do it. I just dried them and there they hang in their net bags in the storage room and here I sit wondering if there is a treatment I can do, pre-planting, to try to kill the thrips.
Any ideas would be most appreciated.
Poochella

Kirk, my last frost date is usually somewhere between June 1st and 15th, but I already have my first and second plantings in, with two or three more to go. I don't have a good outlet for hundreds upon hundreds of glads at once, so I succession-plant them, about every three weeks. HOWEVER - unlike where you are, they grow very slowly here, due to the cold nights, so they won't be big enough for late frosts to matter much. As long as there is only one spike of foliage out to get killed, they recover from frost just fine, and then their roots have established so they can grow back much faster than freshly-planted glads. You can plant them somewhat before your last frost date, since they don't pop out instantly. They will grow their roots for the first couple of weeks, so as long as the ground isn't frozen, they are safe. My first planting, made about 3 weeks ago, is just starting to show its first foliage shoots, with a frost expected tonight, but that's okay, that first single spike is quite expendable.

As for when to do the last planting, I think you can figure about 90 days between planting and harvest there (but I could easily be wrong on that - flowerfarmer is the person to ask, for your area). Flower spikes are frost-sensitive, with damage anywhere from looking burnt at the edges to totally killed, so you want to plan to harvest your last glads before any serious frosts come. Covering them isn't a great option, unless you can make a tunnel for them, with the cloth or plastic held by hoops or some other framework, above the flower spikes. If it is held up by the flower spikes, some of them will break, especially if there is ANY wind or a heavy dewfall.

I have dug them every year but plan to experiment with leaving a few in the ground this year. It's a calculated risk. Some folks around here leave them in the ground. Depending on the weather, they might survive, they might not.

Jeanne

Would somebody tell me if planting the corms 8" deep helps them to not fall over? How deep do you plant yours?

I roughly figure the biggest dimension of the corm - in glads, that's the width - multiply it by two, and plant that deep. That means smaller ones are planted shallower than bigger ones. It's a good general rule of thumb, of how deep to plant any bulbs, although there are certainly exceptions.

I think what keeps mine from falling over is that I always cut them with zero to two florets open, never later. Until more florets open, the spike isn't that heavy, so it's less likely to fall over. I also firmly press the corms into their holes and pat the soil down over them pretty firmly. Which, if any, of those things is helping, who knows??!!, but very, very rarely do mine fall over. Maybe 2 out of 1500 or so last year fell over. I don't provide support. I also plant them fairly thickly, so maybe that gives them some wind protection, I don't know. They are grown in a very windy field. Maybe struggling against the constant wind strengthens them, I don't know!!

Jeanne

So it should be ok to plant my glads 1st of May?
Also fertilizer needed to put below corm and fertilizers needed for season??
Any help or advice you can give is appreciated to this newbi.

A Commercial Grower, over at Dave's (no longer a suscribing member, so I cannot access anymore), said to plant them deep (8 - 12" ), fill in as they grow and then hill up the soil. It worked. This grower does all of his work with a tractor. Also, I threw on some manure & triple super phosphate when I started filling in the trench. And they're planted thickly, almost touching. Perhaps it is soil temperature rather than a date on the calender that determines when to plant?
@ Pooch, a friend advised me to use Lysol on the corms, I sprayed the heck out of them, tho afterwards she laughed and said she meant to soak them. Bayer Systemic has been working for me, both on the glads and the dahlias. I didn't have much of a problem with thrips last year. All I have to do is remember to use it.