That is such a good idea! I'm surprised I didn;t think of it myself as living in India nearly 30 years ago we were so used to working with running water for just an hour or two only and that too at ungodly hours like 5.30 - 7.30 am or something, and we still had a beautiful garden! You get comfortable with things and stop being creative! And it just so happens one of the callas is named "Calla (New Zealand) Majestic Red"!! Will keep in mind your tips on the peonies and dahlias... tomorrow's planting day!!

Sue, thanks for article link. I just looked at glads I lifted and they don't have second corm under old one. They have plenty of little bulbels. Assume I leave the roots on but just clean off dirt? Never dug them up for storage before but they were in container that I needed it for planting Spring blooming bulbs...LOL. I have another batch of fluttery white with burgundy centers (Acidanthera)whose foliage were strangled by a wandering Morning Glory on steroids all summer but survived like troopers. When I dug them they also had tons of little bulbels around original corm but no second corm. What gives with my bulbs...LOL. I know I can buy more next year but I get idiotically attached to my plants once they've bloomed. Too painful to toss them. I've got a laundry basket full of Daffodil bulbs I dug up in Spring because I needed to rearrange them after planting perennials and annuals. Just couldn't toss them. They've been sitting all summer/early fall in that laundry basket lined with punctured newspaper in potting soil. When I took off overturned laundry basket I had on them to keep out excessive moisture I found a mass of new foliage peeking out from the potting soil. It looks like a little sea of Daffodils just waiting to burst into bloom next Spring! Thinking of having someone just hold one side, lift the entire mass and plant them in pile of organic top soil I have and then I can divide them carefully next year. (yeah, right) If I slice into that mass now it's likely I'll "slice and dice" the way I've done with Daffs in ground when planting new tulips last month. Tulips in amended clay from last year had disintegrated so glad I bought new ones just in case that was what I found when I lifted their bulb cages. Tulips are the only bulbs I'd be truly upset about moles, voles or some other creature eating. I'm wondering how many people I can scare the pants off of or really perplex by storing these glad corms/bulbs in pantyhose hanging from hooks with gardening tools along inside of garage...LOL. Love gladiolus...they're such a pretty piece of the season's succession of blooming beauties.

You do have a special situation. On a hot balcony in zone 10. Hmm. For the soil to remain cool in a heat trap a large pot is needed. If you use plastic and the sun hits it the soil temperature is going to be inhospitable to bulbs. For daffodils I would try a 16 inch deep one, preferably unglazed clay (needs more frequent watering than glazed). If all I had was plastic I would find a way to shield the sides from the sun's rays. What confuses me is your saying they are still a little green, just starting to die off. Daffodil foliage ripens by June and they are dormant all summer. Are you very sure you have daffodils? Can you take a picture of the foliage? I think the only green foliage bulbs I have right now are nerine, dahlias, rain lilies and lilies.

Mother-in-Law requested the entire bed be rototilled, since "the damned things have been dying out and looking crappy for years". (read: Not so many flowers) Under the premise of "struggling" to remove the brick edging, I pulled a half dozen tools from the barn and surreptitiously tried my luck at finding some bulbs. ...once I found some, which appeared perfectly healthy but very very overcrowded, I may have fabricated a little white lie about the rototiller not working, so as to justify my turning the bed by hand.... (FYI, answering my original question, a pitchfork seems to cause the least damage, but hand rake or even just hands was even better. Two set of eyes really helped too.) Six hours later, and only a 4x4' section is turned. Not because the soil was tough (compact, but sandy) but because it was literally a MAT of bulbs! Only 20% of the bed dug, and I now have TWO five gallon pails of daffodil bulbs....