by The bulbous herbaceous perennial plant Tigridia is a representative of the Iridaceae family. According to various sources, this genus includes 20–55 species. The range of this crop extends from Mexico in the north to Peru and Chile in the south. The name of this flower is derived from the Latin word tigris (in the genitive case – tigridis), which means “tiger”, most likely due to the variegated color of the perianth. Previously, the Aztecs lived in Mexico, they grew these flowers because they have medicinal properties. In Europe, tigridia began to be cultivated since the 16th century, but it has never been particularly popular with gardeners, most likely due to the fact that such a plant blooms only in the first half of the day, and the lifespan of the flower is only 8 hours.
Features of Tigridia
The height of the tigridia bush can vary from 0,3 to 0,7 m. This perennial bulbous plant can have branched or simple shoots. Evenly folded greenish leaf blades have a sword-shaped form. Single flowers are located at the tops of the arrows, and they can also be collected in 2 or 3 pieces. The flowers have a bizarre shape, similar to an exotic butterfly. The fruit is a box, inside which are compressed, angular seeds.
Planting Tigridia in open ground
What time to plant
Since tigridia bulbs react extremely negatively to frost, they should be planted in open soil only after warm weather sets in, usually in the last weeks of spring or the first weeks of summer. A sunny open area should be chosen for planting. This crop can also be grown in partial shade, but in this case the flower stalks will become weak and thin, and therefore they will need to be tied to a support. The area should also be protected from drafts and sharp gusts of wind, as they can damage the thin and weak shoots of this flower. Suitable soil should be loose, light, moderately moist, well-drained and non-acidic. Excessively dense soil can be corrected by adding sawdust or sand.
Rules of landing
Immediately before planting, the planting material should be immersed in a solution of the Maxim preparation for a couple of hours (1 milligrams per 2 liter of water). Bulbs treated in this way will be protected from fusarium, white and gray rot and other diseases. The depth to which the bulbs should be planted directly depends on their size. For example, the smallest bulbs should be planted at a depth of about 50 mm, and the largest ones are deepened into the soil by 100 mm. Between the bulbs in a row, a distance of at least 15 centimeters should be maintained, while the distance between rows should be about 20 centimeters. The first shoots can be seen only after 30-40 days, the grown bushes will bloom in August, but as a rule, they do not have time to bloom before the frost, which has an extremely bad effect on the replacement bulbs. In this regard, experienced gardeners advise growing the corms indoors before planting them in open soil. To do this, they are forced in the last days of March. More details about this will be given in the section on replanting this plant.
Caring for Tigridia in the Garden
Growing tigridia in your garden is quite simple. It needs timely watering, weeding, fertilizing and loosening of the soil surface between the bushes. Experienced gardeners advise to cover the surface of the plot with a layer of mulch, this will not only preserve the structure of the soil, but also reduce the number of waterings, weedings and loosenings. It will also be necessary to remove flowers that have begun to fade in time, and, if necessary, tie the bushes to pegs or rods.
How to water and feed
When grown in the garden, this plant requires systematic watering. During prolonged drought, the bushes should be watered every day, using such a volume of water that the soil can soak to the depth of the corms. Also, during prolonged drought, the above-ground part of the bushes will need to be moistened from a spray bottle with lukewarm water in the evening.
If all the necessary fertilizers were added to the soil during preparation for planting, then you can forget about fertilizing the tigridia until the end of the season. If the soil is poor or depleted, then the bushes will need to be fertilized only a couple of times per season, and a solution of complex fertilizer is used for this (1 grams per 3 liter of water). Fertilizers should be added 4 weeks after the appearance of foliage and during budding.
Transfer
In order for the plants to bloom earlier, the bulbs need to be grown indoors at the beginning of the spring period. They should be planted in the last days of March in a pot with a light soil mixture. 1 or 3 corms are planted in 4 pot at once, while they need to be deepened into the substrate by at least 30 mm. In the first weeks, the bulbs will need to be provided with moderate watering. After the corms begin to sprout, the abundance of watering should be increased, it should be taken into account that the substrate should be wet to the depth at which the roots of the corms are located. It is best to choose pots with wide holes for drainage for planting corms, and the stand-plate should be quite high so that the tigridia can be watered from below. With this type of watering, the risk of developing fungal diseases is relatively lower. After the arrows appear, the containers with tubers should be transferred to a well-lit, warm windowsill. Remember that these plants do not tolerate drafts. These corms are planted in open soil in the first days of June.
The depth of the planting hole for the transplanted plant should be from 0,5 to 0,6 m. At the bottom of the hole, a drainage layer of horse manure or broken brick should be made, while its thickness should be from 0,2 to 0,25 m. Then a layer of loose soil of the same thickness as the previous one should be placed on top of it. Then it is necessary to place the sprouted corm on it, after which the hole is filled with nutritious soil. Transplanted plants need abundant watering.
Reproduction of Tigridia
If the bushes start blooming from mid to late July, the seeds will be able to ripen before the frosts. Seeds are collected before the frosts begin. They are sown in winter, and pre-sowing preparation of the seeds is not required. The containers are put away in a well-lit, warm (20 to 25 degrees) place. When picking seedlings, you need to be very careful to avoid damaging their roots. After the shoots develop a pair of true leaf blades, they should be picked into individual pots, taking them together with a lump of earth. About 6-7 months pass from the moment of sowing until the beginning of flowering.
Vegetative methods can also be used to propagate this crop. During one season, about five replacement corms grow from one adult corm. They should be separated from the parent corm before planting, and the places of breaks and cuts should be sprinkled with coal powder, after which the corms can be planted in the soil.
Diseases and pests
Quite often, gardeners fail to preserve the planting material of tigridia until spring, because most of it rots. As a rule, rot appears on those bulbs that are poorly ripened. That is why it is extremely important to make sure that the corms are well ripened before preparing them. Also, for preventive purposes, it is necessary to treat the corms before storing them in any fungicide solution, for example: Maxim, Benlate or Fundazole.
A plant grown in open ground can be affected by scab or rust. To prevent this, it is recommended to spray the foliage with herbal infusions or fungicide solutions.
If the plant is affected by mosaic, it is impossible to cure it, since viral diseases are considered incurable today. In this regard, it is extremely important to provide the plant with proper care and suitable conditions for growth, so that it is strong and less sick.
Mole crickets, slugs, cabbage moths and thrips can cause harm to tigridia. To exterminate thrips, as well as moths, together with their caterpillars, the foliage of the bushes must be sprayed with a solution of any insecticide. Slugs are collected by hand to make the work easier, pieces of slate or boards are laid out around the area, under which most of the gastropods crawl during hot hours of the day. Remove them from under the baits and destroy them. And a soap solution must be poured into the mole cricket’s passages that have been discovered. If the mole cricket tries to escape by getting outside, it must be caught and destroyed.
Tigridia in winter
Preparing for storage
Since tigridia is a heat-loving plant, it can be left for the winter in the open ground only in the warmest southern regions. Therefore, most gardeners with the onset of autumn remove the corms from the soil and put them away for storage until spring, while you should choose a fairly cool place, but the temperature there should not fall below 0 degrees. However, digging up tigridia corms and storing them is not so simple. In order for the planting material to be well preserved until spring, it must be fully ripe, and for this you need to know when exactly to remove the bulbs from the soil in the fall. This procedure is carried out only after all the leaf blades on the bush have withered. If there is a threat of frost, but the foliage is still green, it is recommended to dig up the bushes together with a lump of earth, which should be large enough, then transfer it to a cool and well-lit room. Only after the leaf blades turn yellow and wither can you begin to harvest the planting material for storage. Preparing the corms for storage includes cleaning, washing, and treating them in a solution of the Maxim preparation and thoroughly drying them. Separating the corms from the parent corms should be done in the spring before planting, but not in the fall.
Storage Rules
The corms should be placed in a container filled with dry sand or peat. For storage, they are put away in a cool (3-10 degrees) room with normal air humidity. Also, if desired, the bulbs can be put in paper bags, which are put away on the shelf of the refrigerator intended for vegetables, where they will be stored until spring. During the winter, do not forget about the bulbs, you should carry out a systematic check, during which you need to discard all spoiled and rotten bulbs.
Types and varieties of Tigridia
Gardeners cultivate only one type of this crop ― Tigridia peacockii (Tigridia pavonia). This species is native to Mexico and Guatemala. The height of the bush can vary from 0,25 to 0,7 m. On the surface of the corms, which have an irregular shape, there are membranous scales. The length of the bulbs reaches 60 mm, and in diameter – about 40 mm. At the end of the growing season, the old corm is completely exhausted, but it grows babies that form nests. The parent corm has almost the same number of babies and scales on the surface. From one bulb, 3-5 peduncles will grow, with about 5 flowers formed on each of them. The folded greenish wide leaf blades along the length have a sword-shaped shape. The flowers, reaching 10-15 centimeters in diameter, consist of 6 lobes that open alternately. The outer lobes of the perianth are orange-violet or deep red, and the inner ones are not as large as the outer ones, they have an orange-yellow spotted color, like the pharynx. Tigridia blooms in July-August, and the lifespan of each flower is 8-10 hours. In general, the duration of flowering is about 2-3,5 weeks. Garden forms:
- AlbaThe flowers are white, and there are red spots on their surface.
- AureaThere are carmine spots on the surface of the dark yellow flowers.
- CarmineaThe flowers are orange, covered with yellow spots.
- LilaceaThe red-purple flowers have carmine spots.
- RosalindThe color of the flowers is soft pink.
- CanariensisThe yellowish flowers have a deep red center.
- SpeciosaThe flowers are scarlet-red in colour, with yellow-golden spots on them.
Quite popular is the variety mix “Tigridia Ferraria Mix”: the height of the bush is about 0,6 m, the leaf blades have a sword-shaped form, the flowers reach 15 centimeters in diameter, their outer petals are distinguished by a single-color color (purple-pink, white, red, orange or yellow), on three inner petals there are spectacular spots. Specialists engaged in selection use in their work Mexican tigridia with yellow flowers, tubular tigridia with pinkish flowers and tigridia celeriana – lilac-blue flowers. And also use other species that are not grown by gardeners themselves.