What is under the soil?

A guide to growing and dividing 59 plants from bulbs, corms, tubers and rhizomes.

Depth, spacing, timing from your own frost dates, how to divide, how to store, and which plants are unsafe for pets.

A bulb cut in half: a flower already folded inside.

Five kinds of store

They all hold food for the next season. How they are built decides how you plant, divide and keep them.

Cut it in half: you see layers like an onion.

27 plants

Cut it in half: it is solid all the way through.

8 plants

Knobbly, with eyes or dimples; solid when cut.

9 plants

Grows horizontally and is segmented, with a shoot at the growing tip.

11 plants

A cluster of fat fingers joined at a crown; a finger with no crown piece will not sprout.

4 plants

Pick the shape in your hand. See it whole and cut open, and the plants it could be.

Enter your last and first frost dates and get dates for every plant.

See each plant in soil to scale, or work out depth from your own bulb.