Help Overwintering Tender Plants

 I am not green-fingered. Every year I attempt to overwinter tender
plants, but it never seems to work. This year I have had a beautiful
clump of Ornithogalum Thyrsoides which I really want to save - please
can someone give details as to how to store these bulbs over the winter
for next year? I have also lost young cordyline and trachycarpus in
recent years and have some more (in pots) I wish to protect from the
cold (outside). I don't have a greenhouse or anywhere suitable to just
stick the pots over winter.
Advice gratefully received!

 On 10/10/2011 09:12, Maria wrote:

What part of the country are you in?

Ornithogalum thyrsoides is a winter-flowering species.  It is dormant in
summer.  So if you are trying to store it now, for flowering in spring
or summer, you are trying to make the plant do something unnatural.  It
should be watered now, and the bulbs left to go dry in the pot over
summer.  If you cannot provide greenhouse protection (and it really only
has to be frost-free, not heated to any degree), then you should enjoy
it indoors by a sunny window.  Stop watering in late spring, and let it
dry out (the leaves will start to go yellow to give you some idea when
to stop watering).  Cover the pot to stop water getting in, and put it
in the sun to bake dry.

Cordylines suffered last winter because of the extreme cold, and a
disease which was doing the rounds.  Usually, green cordylines are
fairly hardy, and a well-established plant will survive several degrees
of frost.  The purple-leaved variety is less hardy.  Trachycarpus is
fully hardy in most places in the UK.  BUT remember that any plant in a
pot is far more vulnerable to frost than one on the ground.  It isn't
the cold which usually kills the upper growth, but the fact that the
soil becomes frozen in the pot and the roots cannot take up water from
the frozen soil. This is made worse by the cold,dry winds we often
experience in winter.  So, as strange as it may seem, the plant dies of
drought in winter!.  If you have plants in pots, and nowhere to store
them under cover, the best thing to do is wrap the pots in layers of
newspaper and/or bubblewrap.

--

Jeff