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 Another plea for help.......... I have several fox tail liies which were very impressive the first year they were in , however, the last two years they have produced scant foliage to the height of around 8" but then stop and havent flowered since.
This spring i did investigate the corms and they appeared very much alive and viable.

Should i buy new and start again next year or is there some restorative technique i can try?

Over to the wise..........

  thanks in anticipation
    RR

don't know much about them apart from the fact that they're amazing!

have you seen if it's possible to divide them? it could be that they're too conjested and packed together because there's new corms?

Hi RR,

you don't say if they are in the ground or in a pot, but they don't like competition.

If you have a steady hand and lots of patience and they're in a pot, it might be worth dividing them out.  Otherwise, do they get well fed once the flowers are over so they can store up flower bits for the next season?  They might have bloomed out all their energy and not been able to replace it. 

Last thing I can think of for now, is sun & heat.  They need lots of baking, and shade or even semi shade will reduce their vigour.

Hope that helps

 Ta Froglets

             They are in the midst of a flower bed in full sun all day, but quite a full one so have lots of competition ........... so my dilemna now is whether to exhume the foxtails and put 'em in pots , or  to give them a huge helping of mulch and good stuff ........ any suggestions?

Think I've exhausted my knowledge now.  Mine are in a full flower bed in full sun on sandy soil and I'm looking forward to finding out how they do next year.....

Have had fantastic success and dismal failures with pots so tried some in the ground for the first year and they were mostly brill ( or dead).  Sorry - will have to wait and see here too.

Cheers

They don't like being in pots and they do like to be planted deeply.  Mine flower regularly, full sun, well drained soil and no competition.

Good mulch with well rotted manure/compost after they have died back and a good sprinkle of bonemeal late spring seems to do the trick.

i haven't tried these, but they sound as though they may need similar conditions to crown imperials. I've found that if these don't thrive, it's worth moving them around to see if they do better elsewhere. On one side of my garden they fade away, on the other they flourish. They're another species that likes deep planting.

Deep Planting?  you sure?  how deep?  I'm sure I saw a prog where they were planted close to the surface.

Now I'm confused.  Off to Google.

Well, I grow them for a living and I plant them deeply, all I'm doing is saying what works well for me.

Good enough for me then.

The tomes say 2".  Is that what you mean by deep?  I have sandy based soil so they should be happy from the drainage point of view.

I emptied some out of a pot a few weeks ago & planted them very shallow, think I'd better drop them down a little.

in't this forum brilliant!

Deeds, since you grow them for a living, which are the most reliable and which varieties are best for height.

Ta

Just as importantly, what sort of conditions do they like?