How to Grow Saffron Spices

Mix equal parts rich potting soil and mature compost. Fill your raised garden bed with this mixture. Raised garden beds offer your crocus bulbs the well-drained, semi-warm environment they need to grow and blossom. You can also control the kind of soil in your raised garden bed more easily than ground soil.

Dig a hole for each bulb about 3 inches deep, spacing them about 6 inches apart. Place each bulb in its hole and cover lightly with soil. Do this in early fall, after the evenings turn cool. Do not water; the bulbs are dormant and may rot if watered during this period. The bulbs should sprout by the next autumn.

Watch for crocus leaves to poke up through the soil in your garden bed one year after planting. They will look like clusters of hardy grass. Water these new sprouts lightly. The soil should be moist, but never too wet. Allow the soil to dry between waterings.

Wait for the flowers to mature and open. Gently pluck the red stigmas from each flower. You may use them fresh or dry them for future use. You may get only a tbsp. of spice the first year. In following years, more flowers will sprout from divided bulbs, yielding more spice.

Stop watering when the flowers begin to wilt in mid-April. They are going dormant and no longer need water. Crocus sativus grows in cycles opposite most other plants; it flowers all during the winter and dies back in the spring.