Blooms Indoors – Force Bulbs
Enjoying Indoor Blooms
The way to have beautiful flowers indoors in the middle of winter is to start forcing them in the fall. It’s a lot of fun to grow bulbs indoors. It’s easy to do and takes up very little space. Creating a fake short winter is the trick. Fool potted bulbs into thinking t’s winter by putting them in a cool closet, in the refrigerator, or if it’s cold outside, in a foam cooler on a balcony, patio or porch. Simulating winter conditions will cause the bulbs to grow sturdy roots and start to sprout in preparation for spring.
Use Good Soil
You can make your own potting soil, or use any commercial organic potting mix. 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.
Soil from your outside garden may contain bacterial or fungal pathogens that could infect the plant roots since it’s not sterilized, so it’s better not to use it.
A Home For The Bulbs – The Pot
After you have the soil ready, choose the pot you want to use and place a few pieces of broken crockery over the drainage holes. This keeps the hole from clogging up with compacted dirt, and also keeps the dirt from falling out during the planting process.
Fill the pot half-full of soil mix. Put the bulbs in the pot with their pointed ends up. They should be planted as close together as possible, without actually letting the bulbs 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.
Now You Wait
Early blooming bulbs like crocus, daffodils and snowdrops work well. 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. It takes more time for bulbs like tulips, generally 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.
Light Up Their Life.
Once enough time has elapsed, you can begin checking the pots every day or two. Fine white roots coming out of the drainage holes, and/or shoots 2 or three inches above the soil, are signs to take the pots out of cold storage.
At this point, the 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.
Reusing The Bulbs.
Cut the flower stems off after the blooms die if you wish to reuse the bulbs. Let the foliage have plenty of sunlight for continued growth. This will gather the nutrients the bulb needs to bloom next year.
Leave the leaves on after the foliage withers. Leave them be and store the bulbs in the pots in a cool, dry place until they can be planted outside. Since being forced to bloom inside weakens the bulb, don’t try to make it blooom a second time inside. Any bloom from a second go round would be small.
After bulbs are planted outside, in a year or two they will sync in with the natural seasonal schedule. Then they will start making a gorgeous display of blooms at the appropriate time.
No related posts.