How to Plant, Treat, Dig and Store Your Glads 
When your bulbs arrive and you are not ready to plant, open the bags to admit 
air, and put them in a cool place until planting time. 
_ Glads can be planted as soon as the frost is out of the ground (about April 10 in 
this latitude) and for a succession of bloom until autumn frosts plantings may be 
continued every two weeks until July Ist. 
If you did not prepare the bed the previous fall by spading rough and coating 
with 3 to 5 inches of old rotten cow manure, this to be spaded in deeply in the 
spring, then you should prepare the bed now. 
FIRST—Select a place as far from buildings and large trees as you can. The 
better you prepare the bed the better your results will be. Spade deep and use 
plenty old rotten cow manure if you can get it, otherwise use a good grade of com- 
plete artificial fertilizer, such as Vigoro. Dig a trench about 7 inches deep, and 
apply a heavy dusting of fertilizer in the bottom of the trench, cover this with 2 
inches of good soil and plant your bulbs on top of this, then cover with the remaining 
ground. This will put the bulbs 5 inches below the LEVEL. See that no fertilizer 
touches the bulbs. 
You can plant your bulbs close together if you must, but bulbs planted 7 to 10 
inches apart in the trench will produce much bigger plants and flowers. The glad- 
iolus needs root room to produce exhibition spikes. 
After planting, the bulbs won’t need much extra watering for some time, this 
forces them to send their roots down deep into the rich mellow earth, but when the 
flower spikes start showing, you absolutely MUST keep the ground moist deep down. 
A mere sprinkling each night will do no good; in fact is harmful, as this draws the 
roots to the surface where they are damaged by the hot surface ground. After the 
flower spikes start showing, soak your glads down twice each week and keep this up 
until you cut the spike. 
When the first blooms open, cut the spikes in the morning (leaving at least 4 
leaves on the plant to develop the bulb next year.) 
Place the cut spike in water in your cool basement, and leave until the following 
morning. You will be surprised to see how the spike developed. Your spike is now 
in its prime for vasing. The gladiolus is primarily a cut flower. Don’t leave these 
lovely flowers out in the wind and sun to be damaged. Enjoy them indoors. 
Thrip is a tiny insect, in fact it is a mere speck. They suck the life juice from 
the tender flower spike even before it emerges. The result is a poor spike, if any. 
Thrip are about 1/25th of an inch long, have wings, and are carried around by 
the wind, on clothing, etc. They increase tremendously fast, and if only a few adult 
thrip are present in the spring, they will increase to millions by August. Even if 
you plant thrip free bulbs, you will likely get them from our neighbors if their plants 
have thrip, because thrip are carried around. 
HOWEVER THERE IS AN EASY REMEDY. Fortunately in our cold climate 
thrip cannot easily overwinter outdoors, the danger lies in thrip overwintering the 
bulbs. EVERY GLAD BULB SHOULD BE DISINFECTED before planting, 
no matter if you had them on hand or just bought them. Use BICHLORIDE OF 
MERCURY, 1 oz. dissolved in 7 gallons of water. Place each variety in a cloth sack, 
labeled, and soak the bulbs 12 to 18 hours. The solution should be kept at 60 degrees 
or over. Plant the bulbs while still wet, if possible. This dip kills all thrip and their 
eggs and also certain bacteria that might be present. Now your bulbs are in good 
shape, but you will have to see to it that your neighbors all around also clean up 
their bulbs otherwise as stated above they will spread the thrip around to your 
plants again. Therefore get all the neighbors who have bulbs to bring them to- 
gether and disinfect them. Have a community dip for glad bulbs: BICHLORIDE 
OF MERCURY IS POISON. Use wood or crock container, never a metal one. 
HOW TO DIG GLADS: October is the principal digging month. Lift with a 
potato fork and cut off the stem close to the bulb. 
HOW TO STORE GLADS: Store bulbs in the coolest portion of your basement. 
35° to 40° is ideal. They will freeze at about 28°. They should be stored in shallow 
trays so that there will be a circulation of air about them. If any thrips are present 
four tablespoonsful of napthalene flakes to 100 large, fully dried bulbs enclosed in a 
paper sack may be used as a home fumigant. Sack should be only partially closed to 
avoid moulding of bulbs. A three-week fumigation by this method is generally used. 
