Lily Bulbs
One of the reasons lilies are so easy to grow is that it is just a matter of buying lily bulbs and dropping them into the ground. Lilies really require very little care, and some lilies come up again year after year with minimal human attention. Every lily plant is made up of the bulb, roots, stem, leaves and flowers.
Lily bulbs are the primary means of planting lilies. Lily bulbs can be bought at most all garden stores and places that sell flower seeds. If you look at a lily bulb before you plant it you will see that the bottom has scales around an axis. This axis is called the basil plate and it contains everything lily bulbs need to reproduce. The scales are really leaves that are not yet developed. They provide all of the food and nutrients the plant needs to live until it is large enough to have grown roots and leaves.
People who are familiar with lily bulbs can tell what color the lily is going to be by looking at the scales. Depending on what kind of lily bulb you have, it is either concentric or rhizomatous. If it is concentric, every year a new bulb or two will develop close together around the axis. Sometimes a stem will even travel a ways underground taking the baby bulbs away from the original plant so that the new plants can grow beside the original plant.
Lily bulbs can also be rhizomatous, which means that the new bulb pushes out from the end of the original bulb. In most American lilies the rhizome or rootstock is approximately an inch across and covered with scales. Each one of these scales can grow to produce its own lily bulb. In fact, one way to grow numerous lilies without buying separate plants is to remove several scales from the rhizone either before planting the bulb. or by digging it up in the fall.
Once you have taken a few scales off the bulb, you should prepare a mixture of fungicide, peat moss and vermiculite. This moist mix should be placed in a plastic bag with a couple of air holes punched in the top. Leave the bag in a warm spot, around 70 degrees for six weeks. By then you should check the bag to see if the scales have grown teeny bulbs at the base of each one.
When these new little bulbs have grown to be about ½ to ¾-inch across, place the bag in the refrigerator for three months. When spring has come, separate then new little bulbs from the scales and plant the lily bulbs outside in your garden. Just put them into the ground and cover with two inches of soil. Each new little bulb will grow a rhizome with scales. If you dig up the bulbs in the fall, take off some scales and follow the same procedure you can soon have an entire area filled with lilies.
If you live in a cold location, the lily bulbs can be placed in containers or pots to grow before planting them outside.