In Houston, they can stay in the ground all year. If you grow species Gladiolus from seed you can greatly extend the bloom period: X/Y=Bicolor SPECIES COLOR BLOOM G. abreviatus Red/Black Wi-Sp G. alatus Orange/Yellow Sp G. angustus White-Yellow/Purple-Red Sp G. aureys Yellow Wi-Sp G. brevifolius Pink/Yellow Sp G. caeruleus Pale Blue/Purple Sp G. cardinalis Crimson/White Su G. carinatus variable(Red Yellow Pink Blue) Sp G. carmeneus Deep Pink Su-Au G. caryophyllaceus Pink-Mauve Sp G. cunonius Red/Green Sp G. dalenii Orange/Yellow Sp-Au G. debilis White/Pink-Red Sp G. eklonii Variable Su G. floribundus Pink-Mauve Sp G. Geardii Pink Su G. gracilis Blue or Pink Au-Sp G. griseus Mauve-Gray/Yellow Au-Wi G. gueinzii Pink-Purple/Red Su G. hirsutus Pink/Brown Sp G. holandii Pale Pink/Dark pink Su-Au G. hyalinus Brown/Cream Wi-Sp G. imbracatus Purple Su G. involutus White-Pink/Yellow Sp G. liliaceus Red(day)Blue(night) Sp G. longicollis White/Yellow Su G. maculatus Brown-Purple/Red Au-Wi G. melliusculus Pink-Red/Orange/Yellow/Purple Sp G. monticola Pink Su-Au G. mortonius Pink/Red Su-Au G. oppositiflorus Pink Su-Au G. orchidiflorus Green/Brown/Purple Sp G. papilio Mauve/Purple Sp-Su G. permeabilis Pink/Yellow Sp G. quadrangularis Bright Red Sp G. recurvus Green/Yellow/Pink Wi-Sp G. rogersii Blue/Mauve/Purple Sp G. saccatus Bright Red Wi-Sp G. saundersii Red-Orange/White Su-Au G. sericeovillosus Pink-Wine Red/Yellow-Green Au G. splendens Bright Scarlet Sp G. teretifolius Red-Orange/Yellow Au-Sp G. trichonemifolius Yellow/Pink-Red Sp G. tristis Yellow/Brown/Green Sp-Su G. undulatus Pink/Green Sp-Su G. varius Pink/Purple Su-Au G. watermeieri Gray/Purple Wi-Sp Hyphenated seasons indicate extended blooming season. Most or all of the above are usually available from Silverhill Seeds in Kenilworth, South Africa Here is a link that might be useful: Silverhill Seeds

Some of my favorite glads are those simple old-fashioned wildflowery ones that are still near to the species. Boone, Carolina Primrose, and Bolivian Peach are especially beautiful and vigorous. They are so graceful and striking that few people who see them actually recognize them as glads. They last quite a while as cut flowers and the colors are so bold yet muted--almost "antique"--at the same time. Oh, and they multiply extremely fast, too. Start with one blooming size corm and next season you will have 10 blooming size corms and 75+ cormels. Winter hardiness is phenomenal. I always wonder why the corms cost so much when they multiply so easily, but they are a wonderful and exquisitely beautiful investment at any price. Trust me on this. Buy some and you will never regret it. 'Atom' is another small beautiful one, though it is slightly less graceful than the three mentioned above and has a touch more of florist glad blood in its veins. It is wonderful both as a garden plant and as a cut flower. There is a species form called Gladiolus oppositiflorus var. salmoneus that is also beautiful, easily grown and has a warm salmony-pink color that will catch your eye from a distance. The florets are more spidery and slightly more widely spaced than florist glads. It has excellent winter hardiness and is wonderful as a cut flower. As for regular florist glads, I spent many years of my life not liking them due to their floppiness and stiffness in the garden but I recently discovered some older ones that I like a lot. They are the stunning coral-pink-orange 'Spic and Span' and the rose-violet-magenta 'Fidelio'. They are truly color slam dunks, so gaudy and vulgar that you can't help but adore them and want to multiply your stock and grow hundreds of them. Although hard to blend in the garden, they excel as cut flowers and remind me of my grandparents who every summer had large bunches of cut glads in vases throughout their home that they picked from their garden. And if I lived in a warmer climate, I would plant as many Gladiolus tristis as I could find. This small graceful species grows throughout the late autumn and winter and flowers in early spring with lots of little pale yellow flowers that are amazingly fragrant at night. In my climate it needs a cool greenhouse to survive, which I don't have. So I can only dream about it...sigh. If only it could be adapted to summer growing!

There are never absolutes in gardening - there are too many variables to track. For example, here in Zone 5 I've seen gladiolus (identified as zone 8 plants) come back without being dug over winter - for at least 3 years in a row. There are a number of reasons why that happened; however, it would be accurate for somebody to say that's not something you should rely on, or not something that would go on forever given slight variations in weather patterns each year in a certain climate. So when it comes to tulips... yes, perennialization is possible, and yes it is difficult. A tulip population you think is going strong could be knocked down by a "bad year" due to particular weather conditions, and it may result in the next year's bulbs being too small to bloom - while it's likely another "bad year" will occur before that they are able to gain adequate size. So from the perspective of some gardeners, those tulips faded away after a few years as they "lost energy" and will not return. But, you could have your tulips planted in a fortunate location - or intentionally given a very ideal growing environment - and have them return for decades, or multiply enough that they can get through the "bad years" and maintain blooming populations. In truth, tulips are capable of perennializing, it is just a big challenge to create the proper conditions and may not be worth it to you or most gardeners. I've observed a white Darwin tulip coming back year after year for at least 20 years now, at my parents house where I grew up; they were planted when I was 4 or 5 years old and a single bulb became a clump of 5-10 coming up from one spot. Recently while visiting and doing some yard work for my parents, I dug the clump to spread the bulbs out, and found they were wedged between two massive roots of a honeylocust tree, and in soil that contained a curious amount of sand, from a sandbox that had once been nearby. It's my guess that the tree roots kept the bulbs from working their way to the surface over the years as bulbs often do - so my guess would be yes, planting deeper is helpful. The sand apparently also helped. The growth of the tree also raised the garden 6-7 inches over the years so they were planted in a raised bed, which seems to have helped. If I were to try to replicate those conditions, I'd mix sand with the soil, use a raised bed, plant around rocks/objects (which may maintain depth but may also concentrate natural precipitation), and take advantage shade from a tree that leafs out relatively late - so it lets sun in when spring is cool, but as the days grow longer the plants get more shaded to slow their retreat into dormancy. ... It's accurate to say that tulip bulbs "die" and grow new bulbs each year. A bulb's basal plate is a modified stem, while the bulb itself is made of modified leaves evolved to wrap around each other like the layers of an onion, called "scales." In the case of tulips, that stem grows up through the bulb, through the ground, up above the ground, and terminates in the flower. That is the end of the stem. The bulb itself cannot continue - it must "branch." In any case, during blooming the bulb's energy stores are just about completely drained. After flowering the bulb then begins new growth in the form of a new bulb (or numerous bulbs) that either originate from inside the mother bulb, inside its dying layers but outside the living ones, or possibly just outside the bulb's outer tunic altogether - but in any case attached to its base, and composed of cells from and genetically identical to the parent plant. It is asexual reproduction. Does this progression represent the "death" of the parent plant to create new plants, or is it just a transition from one year's growth to the next? You'd have to be a philosopher to answer that question. But it doesn't matter; the point is that tulips DON'T get to keep any stored energy any longer than 1 year; they have to to re-gather resources during the period between blooming and dying back to dormancy. And that's why tulip perennialization is difficult in climates that are less-than-ideal for tulips; unlike larger plants that get more and more established though time by getting deeper roots, larger sizes and better energy-storing capabilities - therefore being more and more able to survive unexpected adverse conditions - tulips are never any safer than they are the first year, and therefore being in imperfect conditions can be much more detrimental. If they came back 2 years, they could come back forever - but that's a matter of chance.

Agree with what others have said about testing your soil first, usually through your state ag center. I have a home tester which cost apx $35, & have compared the ag center's reports on my 3 soil samples w/ what my own tester shows - pretty accurate. High end testers cost apx $75-100. I grow the herb comfrey, make a tea like the alfalfa tea described above & apply it with a sprayer or a watering can. I would worry that comfrey used as a mulch or in compost might grow new plants all over the place. Comfrey tea smells until the leaves turn black, then it stops smelling. As I remember the alfalfa tea that I made never stopped smelling until I poured it on the plants, then there was no smell. Comfrey grows very quickly here, dies back somewhat in the winter & costs almost nothing. See links below. Has anyone mentioned a worm box (vermiculture)? Very cheap as the worms eat your rotten produce, newspapers & eggshells & provide liquid gold to your garden. Info on comfrey as fertilizer, see p2 of link for "liquid fertilizer": http://www.organicgardening.com/learn-and-grow/comfrey-power Comfrey needs room as it has a huge taproot. It can also throw a seed. I am currently cutting off the flowers until I can get the sterile one, Russian Comfrey Bocking #14, developed for this use & recommended. Also see book on link below: http://www.nantahala-farm.com/comfrey-root-bocking-14-s.shtml