Gadenin日本語Get the appThe plant is not finished when the flowers are
When the last flower fades, the freesia has spent the corm you planted. That original corm is now shriveling, and above it the plant is building a new one, plus a cluster of small offsets around the base. Every week of green leaf after flowering feeds that new corm, and its size at the end of the season decides whether you get flowers next year or just leaves. Cutting the foliage back for tidiness at this stage is the most expensive mistake available.
Remove the spent flower spike, though. Cut it low, where it emerges from the leaves, as soon as the last flowers on it have gone over. Seed pods take a real share of the plant's resources and freesia grown from seed takes two years or more to reach flowering size, so unless you specifically want seed there is nothing to gain by leaving them.
Keep watering and keep feeding with a high-potassium feed for four to six weeks after the last flower. This is the single most productive period in the whole freesia year and it looks, from outside, like nothing is happening.
Drying off: read the leaves, not the calendar
Dormancy starts on the plant's own schedule, signaled by the leaves yellowing from the tips down. When roughly a third of the foliage has yellowed, start reducing water. When most of it has, stop watering altogether and let the pot dry out completely. Pulling the water too early forces a small immature corm; leaving the pot wet after the leaves have gone rots the corm you just spent a season building.
Do not cut the leaves off while they are yellowing. Let them go fully brown and dry, then pull them away with a light tug; anything that resists is still feeding the corm. In a pot, the whole thing can simply be moved somewhere dry and sunny and left to bake.
| Leaf state | Water | What is happening below |
|---|---|---|
| All green, flowers just over | Normal watering, feed fortnightly | New corm forming, offsets bulking up |
| Tips yellowing | Reduce frequency, stop feeding | Corm nearly full size, plant winding down |
| Half or more yellow | Water rarely, then not at all | Reserves moving down into the corm |
| Fully brown and dry | None at all | Dormant; wet now means rot |
Lifting, cleaning and storing
In climates with wet summers, and anywhere the corms are in the open ground and might get cold or waterlogged, lift them. Where summers are dry and winters mild, corms can stay in the ground and will come back on their own, often multiplying into a good clump. In pots, the easiest approach is to leave the corms in the dry compost and store the whole pot, tipping it out only at planting time.
- Lift when the foliage is fully dry Loosen with a fork well outside the clump and lift the whole mass. Freesia corms sit shallow and scatter easily, so work carefully and sift the soil afterwards for the small offsets, which are worth keeping.
- Dry them for a week or two Spread the corms in a single layer somewhere warm, airy and out of direct sun until the outer skins are papery and the old shriveled corm at the base separates cleanly. Rub off the loose soil and the spent corm; do not wash them.
- Sort by size Keep anything above about half an inch (1.2 cm) across for flowering next season and bag the smaller offsets separately. Offsets planted together in a nursery pot will reach flowering size in one full season of growth.
- Store warm and dry, not cool Freesia is unusual here: the corms want a warm dry rest, around 70-80F (21-27C), which helps break dormancy properly. Paper bags or open trays in a dry room or an airing cupboard suit them. A cold damp shed does not.
- Check once mid-storage Look through the bags once about halfway through the resting period and discard anything soft, moldy or hollow. One rotting corm in a closed bag will take several with it.
Storage warmth is a real requirement, not a convenience. Corms rested cool and damp often emerge slowly, unevenly and with poor flowering, and the effect is easy to mistake for bad stock.
How long the rest should last, and what to record
Freesia needs a genuine dry rest of roughly two to three months before it is ready to start again. Plant sooner and growth is patchy and weak. Beyond three months the corms will wait quite happily until you are ready and the conditions are right, so there is no urgency in replanting the moment the period is up; matching the planting to a spell of cool nights matters far more.
Record the date the leaves finished, the date you lifted, how many corms you got and how many were offsets versus flowering size. That count is the honest measure of the season: a planting that returns more flowering-size corms than you put in was grown well, and one that returns fewer and smaller ones was either fed too little after flowering or dried off too soon. Note which it was, because it is the same decision you will face again next year.