They will certainly die if left out in our cold winter.

I cut my leaves off last week and I will be digging up the bulbs tomorrow or Tuesday. I store them in peat moss, in plastic vegetable bags (the sort with the small holes in them) in the fridge. You might prefer to store them in paper bags - I store most of my bulbs in paper bags, but I find these are more sensitive to drying out than the others, so I switched them to the vege bags a couple of years ago (this is definately a situation where you will have to find out what works best for you).

If you have a cool (5-10C) garage or basement then that would also be a good storage place - you don't have to use a fridge :-) You can store them warmer if you have to, but I find they come out of dormancy too early if stored much above fridge temperature.

Next spring, towards the middle or end of April, I take mine out and pot them up inside in 6-8" pots (there is almost always some root developement at this point and occasionally they've got shoots as well). In a couple of weeks, they'll be able to go outside during the day, and once it's routinely above 5C at night I leave them out. I put them into bigger pots at this time as well. Mine spend the whole summer in pots, so I'm not experienced with growing them in the ground, but I think you'd be best off if you waited until early June at the earliest if you wanted to plant them that way. If the soil temperature is too cold it will set them back and cause problems with flowering, and our ground stays pretty cold for quite awhile!

BP

Thank you Bonniepunch for sharing your experience. I will follow your example but I will probably keep the bulbs just in the store room in the basement. For one thing my fridge is pretty small, for another, I am not sure my husband would like me to keep bulbs I dug up from the soil in it, even if I have washed them very clean!

I normally do that same thing. Take them out, let the bulbs dry out a bit and store it.

I would like to say though that I had a very interesting experience with these plants. One fall, I unknowingly left some bulbs in the ground. My plant had multiplied during summer and I didn't realize there were more bulbs there. So next spring, they came up....to my big surprise...They have survived winter.

However, I would say, this is was very unusual. Generally speaking all calla lilies will die if left out during winter.

Ianna

Instead of planting the callas in the garden and then digging them out and storing them in the fridge for the winter, why not think about using the method that I use....

I have all my calla, begonias and canna (some of each variety), planted in planters. After the frost gets the foliage in the fall, I cut off the foliage and bring in all the planters. I place them in my cold storage area (where the potatoes, carrots, dahlias, etc. are) and leave them there until March/April. I then will take the planters out, water them and let them go again for another year. Every few years I divide the planters with the cannas in them. But as for the callas, they have been in the same large rectangular planters for 3 years and I won't need to divide them for a few years yet. I do add a little slow release fertilizer, mixed into the top of the soil, each spring in all my planters.

My neighbor has calla lilies that overwintered in zone 6. This surprised me as I thought they were very tender.

Like valleyrimgirl I also keep all my callas in a pot and store them in an unheated room in the house for the winter.

I should also mention that I treat them as an indoor plant. Around February when there's sign of growth I place them in the sunniest window (south-facing) where they usually bloom in 8-10 weeks.

One thing I did last year (2009) was pour one 10-on can of Pepsi on them early on in March as I knew it contained phosphorous and believe it or not, that year I got dozens of blooms whereas the years previous I was lucky to get 3-4. This year I didn't do the Pepsi thing and barely got any blooms at all. Coincidence? I don't know, but I'm tempted to try the Pepsi thing again.

As an aside I tried for years to get callas to bloom and had no success. Then I heard that callas grown in pots actually bloom better when they're root-bound so mine are probably really crowded in their 10-inch pot.

Really enjoyed your answers on calla lillys, I am new at this flower & had them given to me for mothers day my leaves are starting to turn brown. these are the coloured ones i have also they are in a small pot Should I not water them to much & leave them in the small pot?

Hi Sybil,

Please note that having your personal email visible makes your email account susceptible to spam by automated web crawlers. It's safer to use GW to forward emails to you from GW to your personal email account.