advice please

Are you planting in pots or in the ground? If you are planting in the ground you shouldn't need to do anything but plant. In pots you can use grit instead of sharp sand, Bulba and I always use grit in pots.

Just a quickie - snowdrops grow so much more reliably from being planted ' in the green' in the spring - but it sounds as though you might be trying special ones. Good luck with them. :-)

Spritz, this may be a daft question, but what do you mean by being more reliable planted 'in the green' in spring? I planted mine last autumn in the ground and although they came up, disappointingly only two flowered. I was presuming these would flower better in their second year and was considering getting some more in anticipation of a better success rate. Any advice to improve on only 10% of bulbs flowering must surely be worth trying.

Daisy you buy the bulbs in spring when they still have their leaves on them and plant immediately. It is claimed that they thrive and flower better than snowdrops that have been lifted after they died back.

I'm in two minds on this as normally you want the leaves on your bulbs to die back naturally to feed the bulb. Lifting them when they are stil i leaf means this can't really happen...

It does, Mg - because they die back in the ground. OK, the roots might not be properly established, but this method does seem to be tried and tested. I've sent the address of a good grower to several members in the last 3 years, and they've all been very pleased at the way the snowdrops thrive in the following spring after having failures with planting dry bulbs in the autumn.

Daisylou - I'm sure it would work for you, too, if you want a lot of snowdrops - they're G. nivalis or G. nivalis 'Flore Pleno' normally, and they cost about £8 - 9 per 100.

Okay Spritzh. I can't even remember when or how we got our snowdrops, aside from the fancy ones that came in posts from SRGC shows.

Very interesting, so thank you for the information. Not a bad price either so I would be interested in the address too Spritz if you don't mind. Love to see both opinions too, I find it amazing how plants behave so differently in gardens.

I'll look it up for you later, and send you a PM, Daisylou,

Thank you