Growing Saffron Crocus in Pots and Container

Growing saffron in pots can be an exciting experience for you and your family. the only thing you should do is buy some saffron bulbs and prepare some pots. Then you can harvest 2 grams saffron per 1 kg saffron bulbs, each kg of corms should be used for one square meter.

Also, this work can be a suitable test for saffron planting on a large and economic scale. In other words, if you aren't certain about the suitability of your region for saffron cultivation, you can do this method of growing saffron for the test.

Your product will be organic and full of benefits for your health. Planting saffron in the home can be done in a garden, box, or pots, so if you are ready you can start with 20 median corms, 20 median bulbs are suitable for an ordinary box.

1. Buy Saffron Bulbs

The first thing is preparing saffron bulbs, you can buy organic corms online or local shop. The suitable bulbs for growing saffron in pots should be in large size (more than 12 g) and have been disinfected.

Remember when you prepared corms, plant them as soon as possible. Because when saffron bulbs are out of the soil, they will be in danger of infection and illness.

The best time for buying and planting saffron corms is the middle of summer. At this time, the bulbs are in the sleep phase and displacement of them is not harmful. Any kind of stress can cause a decrease in your saffron production, so be careful about your corms.

2. Prepare the Pots

In this step you should prepare some pots, every 5 bulbs need 1 small pot. We have an exciting process called saffron bulbs propagation and it means, if you plant 5 bulbs in a pot this year you will have more than 20 saffron bulbs in the seventh year.

The pots should have proper drainage to exit the excess water, this is an important thing for all of the plants. You can use each container for the grow saffron and it isn't any problem, but your pots deep should be at least 25 cm. This is not about saffron roots, this is about saffron propagation and its physiological functions.

3. Prepare Suitable Soil

What do you think about this step and why preparing suitable soil is important?

While we can displace the bulbs every summer but usually the soil that we used for growing saffron in pots will be staying in pots for 7 years and it's necessary to be rich in nutrients, so prepare the best rich possible soil.

Saffron farms create for one time and produce saffron for at least seven years or even 10 years. That means, we aren't forced to plow farms every year and we just should care about soil nutrients and farm pests. This farming method has some advantages and disadvantages that we discuss soon.

You can use garden soil and use some enriching fertilizers such as rotten cow manure or leaf soil fertilizer for preparing your soil. be careful about weed seed sources and don't mix them with your soil.

4. Plant Saffron Bulbs in the Pots

After buying and disinfecting saffron corms, you should plant them in the pots. dig a pit 20 cm deep and put 5 or 6 bulbs in it and pour soil on a pit. Look at the below picture and be careful about the distance of corms.

5. Water and Fertilizer

Saffron is a plant with low water requirement in the vegetative season and doesn't need any water in the summer too. the first water should do in the first month of fall. This water must be deep and full of nutrients, it can help corms to enter their growth phase.

Second saffron irrigation is after harvesting saffron on the 50th day of fall, this water is very important too. The role of this water is to help propagate saffron bulbs. We usually use organic fertilizer for this step of nutrition.

tips: don't use of high nitrogen fertilizers, high nitrogen density can stimulate hyper propagation bulbs and ultimately we have lots of small corms that can't produce saffron flower in the next year. Minimum bulbs size for flowering is 8 gr.

3rd and 4th step of water is optional and done in winter. These waters can help saffron bulbs to get bigger. your bulbs increase every year, so every mother bulb can divide into 2 or 3 daughter bulbs.

6. Harvesting Saffron

After 45 days of fall, saffron flowers appear. At this time we should Harvest, Cleaning and Dry saffron flowers. For saffron harvesting, you should pick up flowers in the early morning and then separate stigmas from other flower parts. look at the below picture to learn how to clean saffron flowers.

Each of the bulbs that be more than 8gr can be flowering and if it is more than 15gr can flower sometimes in the growing season.

After cleaning saffron flowers you will have wet saffron threads, note that this saffron can't be used and first should be dried. You can use heating devices to dry saffron. Spread saffron on paper and put it on the heating device, this process may take 2 or 3 hours.

Whenever the humidity of the saffron gets to less than 10%, saffron is dried and ready to store or use. You can store the saffron in a cool, dark, and dry environment for 2 years.

Our consultants are ready to answer your questions about growing saffron in pots. You can comment on your questions below this post, we will be accountable as soon as possible.

Originally publishe on Kohan Rishe.