Dec 13th, 2008
Spring Blooms Indoors In The Winter Time
Making Blooms Indoors
Spring flowering bulbs can bloom inside. Start the process of forcing bulbs in the fall for lovely winter blooms. Growing bulbs indoors is easy and fun, and takes up very little space. Creating a fake short winter is the trick. By placing potted bulbs in the refrigerator, in a cool closet, or in a foam cooler on a patio or balcony, they will think that it’s winter. This causes them to grow sturdy roots and start to sprout in preparation for spring.
Use The Right Dirt
Any commercial organic potting mix is fine for bulbs, or you can make your own. It’s not hard to do.Use one part perlite, 2 parts peat moss and one part sterilized potting soil. Mix these three things together well. That gives you a clean, porous, moisture retaining, nutrient filled potting soil.
It’s better not to use unsterilized soil from your outside garden because it may contain bacterial or fungal pathogens that could infect the plant roots.
Get A Pot For The Bulbs
When the soil is ready to use, choose the pot you want to use and place a few pieces of broken crockery over the drainage holes. Place it so the soil can’t fall out during the planting process, but with enough free space to allow water to still drain out the hole.
Begin by filling the pot half-full of soil mix. With the pointed ends up, place the bulbs in the container. Place the bulbs as close together as possible, but don’t let them actually touch. The pot should then be filled with soil mix. Water the bulbs thoroughly from the top or immerse them in a tub of water. That settles the soil around the bulbs.
Time For The Dark Side
Crocus, daffodils and snowdrops work well, or any other early blooming bulbs. Many places carry good bulbs. For example, you can click here for Daffodils from Breck’s, plus they have a lot of other beautiful flowering bulbs. It takes about 12 weeks to force these early bloomers. Tulips and bulbs like them need longer, about 16 weeks. Keeping bulbs in cold storage for longer times will produce taller flowers.
Too short a time in storage will result in smaller plants and sometimes flowers that start to grown then die.
Moving To The Light.
Check the pots now and then once it’s close time for the bulbs to start blooming. When you see fine white roots coming out of the drainage holes, and/or shoots that are 2 to 3 inches above the soil, it’s time to take the pots out of cold storage.
At this stage of development all bulbs should be placed in indirect lighting for a while before moving them to direct sunlight. Be carefuly not to allow the soil to dry out.
A gradual transition works best, so move the bulbs first into a location that is still fairly cool if possible, a fairly cool location if possible, such as an unheated entryway or closed off back bedroom, where the temperatures are in the ’50s. Then move them on into the heated areas of the house and into more direct sunlight.
Economize – Reuse Those Bulbs.
To reuse the bulbs, after blooms die, cut the flower stems off. Make sure the foliage has plenty of sunlight to continue to grow, as this gather nutrients for the bulb to bloom next year.
After the foliage withers, don’t pull the leaves off. Store the bulbs with leaves still intact. Place the pots of bulbs in a cool, dry place until they can be planted outside. It doesn’t work well to try to force the bulbs to bloom inside a second time, as being forced to bloom weakens the bulb. Any bloom from forcing bulbs a second time would be small.
By planting the bulbs outside, they will return to their natural schedule and follow the seasons. Once a year, maybe two, have passed, they will be making a beautiful display of blooms at the appropriate time.
