Gladioli Nanus Planting Guide

Gladioli Nanus are a beautiful dwarf, Spring flowering Gladioli - their smaller stature make them perfect in pots, or as a border plant. They are incredibly hardy.

These petite, early-blooming, hardier-than-usual glads, are perfect for the Spring bouquet.

Gladioli Nanus can be planted anytime from late March through to mid/late May.

Planting guide...

• Find a sheltered Sunny spot in your garden with good free draining soil. Gladioli Nanus will tolerate Part shade, but will give you a better display if planted in full Sun.
• Loosen the soil to a depth of around 20cm, and mix in some good quality Bulb Food.
• Plant your Gladioli Nanus Bulbs with their tip facing upwards, at a depth of around 5-7cm. We recommend planting in groups to give the best display (they’ll also hold each other up better)
• Give them a good deep watering - keep moist throughout their growing cycle, but not too wet.

Gladioli Nanus are incredibly hardy, but can be subject to Thrips and Rust. Thrips are a sap-sucking pest that will eventually suck the goodness out of your blooms. You can combat thrips by spraying with a general purpose insecticide - we recommend Naturally Neem for this.

Rust diseases occur most often in mild, moist conditions. Rust is spread by spores that are transferred from infected plants to healthy plants - to combat Rust, we would recommend a fungicide spray such as Yates Bravo.

Picking your blooms…

Gladioli Nanus make a great cutflower - the ideal time to be picking your blooms is when the first floret at the bottom of the stem starts to show some colouring. The blooms will continue to colour up and open once in water.

It’s important that when cutting the stems, that you leave at least 20cm still on the plant, and try to avoid cutting any leaves. This ensures that the plant will continue to thrive, and be able to put their nutrients back into the Bulb for next seasons growth.

After flowering…

After flowering, it’s essential that you let your Gladioli die down naturally - the leaves need to have gone brown and dry before you are able to remove them. Bulbs are small nutrient storage units, and require the photosynthesis from leaves to continue to produce and develop into larger, more floriferous Bulbs.

Once the leaves have died down completely (around December/January) you are then able to harvest the Bulbs… this is not essential, but can be beneficial to flower numbers in subsequent years.

Dig your Gladioli Nanus Bulbs out, and let them dry somewhere sunny for around a week - once the Bulbs are dry, you can then store them somewhere cool and dry (ideally with some air movement) until it’s time to replant in April/May.