Fill Your Home With Spring Blooms
If you start in the fall, you can have lovely spring flowers by the middle of winter. It’s fun and easy to grow bulbs indoors. It also takes up very little space. The idea is to make the bulbs think it’s winter. 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. By doing this, they will grow sturdy roots and start to sprout in preparation for spring.
The Right Soil Is Important
Use any good commercial organic potting soil mix, or you can make your own soil to plant the bulbs in. It’s a simple process.Use 2 parts peat moss, one part perlite, and one part sterilized potting soil. Mix all these 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.
Next, A Pot For Planting
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. Place the bulbs in the container with pointed ends up. Place the bulbs as close together as possible, but don’t let them actually touch. Fill the pot with soil mix, then water the bulbs thoroughly from the top or immerse in a tub of water. That will settle the soil around the bulbs.
Bulbs Need Time In The Dark
Any early blooming bulbs will work, such as daffodils, crocus and snowdrops. You can find these bulbs at many places. Just as an example,click here for Daffodils from Breck’s, plus many other gorgeous flowering bulbs. It will take about 12 weeks to force these early bloomers. It takes more time for bulbs like tulips, generally about 16 weeks. The longer the bulbs are in cold storage, the taller the flowers will be.
If the bulbs are in storage for a shorter period of time, that results in smaller plants and sometimes flowers that start to grown then die.
Providing Light.
When it’s close time for the bulbs to start blooming, begin checking the pots occasionally. When there are shoots 2 to 3 inches above the soil and fine white roots emerging from the drainage holes, it’s time to bring 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 sure the soil doesn’t 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. Give the foliage plenty of sunlight to allow continued growth. This gathers nutrients for the bulb to bloom next year.
Don’t pull the leaves off after the foliage withers. Leave the leaves on the bulbs and store them in their pots in a cool, dry place until they can be planted outside. Bulbs that are forced to bloom inside are weakened, so don’t try to do it a second year in a row. Any bloom from a second go round would be small.
Outside planting of the bulbs will allow them to return to their natural seasonal schedule. After a year or two to adapt, they will start making beautiful displays of flowers outside.
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