Well I couldn't wait the whole week.
Good excuses, hectic work schedule coming up, etc. They could have gone more than a week but... since it's just for home use, they are fine by me. They were on a tighter spacing this time and all the rain had to wash some nutrients out, so maybe they would never be the biggest I grew. A few more pink stained and split wrapper bulbs, but not many. Lots of small bites though, and I did find a culprit - no surprise, a wireworm tangled up in the roots of one. Very little sign of mites this year - I always look for rusty bits around the roots, but many of them are clean this time which is nice.
Now here is something interesting - these three porcelains, last year I could barely tell one from the other. The differences they seemed to have initially have faded and I wondered if every porcelain would converge on the same size, clove number, etc in one environment. But this year with the wild wet winter and spring has proven otherwise.
PH you mentioned that your Music usually have 6 cloves - ours have always had 4. The one I got from the farm "Argentina" came to us from NS, and it was a very large bulb with usually 6 cloves, however they've been 4 cloves on average since their second year here.
Well this year the Argentina reverted to its true type, with a majority of bulbs having 5,6 or even 7 cloves, and just a few 4's. The Music is true to itself, nearly all 4's with a few 5's.
Bonavista was about even between 4 and 6. It had more dwarfing than the others and more pink - but this might be caused by its position in the bed.
Either way it seems that there is a difference among the porcelain varieties, that may cause them to react differently to environmental stresses. That is kind of cool to know, and makes it worthwhile for me to grow more than one kind.
