How to grow gladiolus so it keeps blooming

Gladiolus, also called sword lily, is a flower of the Iridaceae family. It blooms beautifully and is one of the four best-known cut flowers in the world. Gladiolus blooms from July to September and needs a warm environment to flower. Long daylight favors flower bud differentiation, but short daylight can promote earlier blooming. It likes fertilizer, and phosphorus fertilizer improves flower quality. How gladiolus keeps blooming may be achieved through a certain artificial technique. Let's take a look!

1. Variety pairing

There are generally two major groups, spring-flowering and summer-flowering, but there are varieties with different times to maturity and bloom. If you want flowers in all four seasons, you can use early-maturing varieties, mid-maturing varieties, and late-maturing varieties. After planting them all, there can be flowers in every season. In winter they can be grown in a greenhouse and will bloom just the same.

2. Forcing earlier bloom

If there is a gap with no flowers, you can place the corms in a temperature environment between 0°C and 4°C, and after about a month the dormancy will be broken. With plenty of sunlight they bloom earlier, so you can adjust light and temperature to regulate the blooming time and make them bloom earlier. Soaking the corms in 39°C hot water for two weeks can also break dormancy.

3. Delaying bloom

Blooming can also be delayed. Delaying requires storage in a low-temperature, dry environment; promoting dormancy can delay blooming. In low temperature and dry conditions, the corms enter a dormant state and will not bloom. Simply increase temperature and humidity at the time you want them to bloom, and the dormancy will be broken and they will open too. In fact, this is inhibiting blooming.

4. Controlling bloom

Gladiolus likes long daylight and a sunny environment. In such an environment, together with warm temperatures, it blooms relatively early, so properly adjusting temperature and light will change the blooming time. But the premise is having an environment you can change, such as greenhouse insulation, greenhouse heating, and shade-grown planting. Humidity regulation can also change the blooming time.

If gladiolus is to provide cut flowers to harvest in all four seasons, you can plant a mix of varieties with different blooming times, and you can also artificially change environmental factors to regulate the exact blooming time.