Many years ago I went to a talk by a daffodil expert who said that some species of daffodil grow better and earlier if exposed to smoke. He had photos of fields in the Isles of Scilly covered with plastic and a smoke generator being used to blow smoke under the plastic to get the bulbs going.

He then mentioned that the same method is used to get freesia and some other bulbs to flower - and this was illustrated by a picture of a chap with bulbs in a metal sieve holding it in the smoke from a bonfire.

He said that many bulbs that are native to areas where wild fires or bush fires are likely only to flower when exposed to smoke, as then, in the wild, the flowers can pop up from the ashes and the overgrowth of bushes and other plants that would have competed with the bulbs will have gone.

You could dig up your freesias in the autumn, store them over winter, then have a bonfire in the spring, give them some smoke exposure and see if it does the trick.

I have never had trouble flowering freesias, I also have never used smoke, but I do grow them in a frost free greenhouse, hope this is of some use hugs vabascum

Freesias--except some of the rarer species--don't need smoke to flower, but they do need sun and time. Unlike most bulbs, Freesia flower buds aren't waiting in the bulb during dormancy, so the plant needs to grow half a dozen leaves before the flower stem starts to develop, and it needs a minimum of 4 hours of direct sun a day to get enough energy to invest in flowers. Flowering may also be compromised if the corms aren't planted at the right depth.