Weather The Storm

Fill Your Home With Spring Blooms

Want to have gorgeous blooms inside in the middle of winter? Start growing spring bulbs in the fall. It can be a lot of fun to grow bulbs indoors and make them bloom, and takes up very little room. Creating a simulated short winter does the trick. Potted bulbs placed in the refrigerator, in a cool closet, or in a foam cooler on a patio or balcony, will think that it’s winter. This process causes them to grow sturdy roots and start to sprout in preparation for spring.

Use Good Dirt

You can make your own potting soil, or use any commercial organic potting mix. You can do it pretty quickly.  Use 1 part sterilized potting soil, one part perlite, and 2 parts peat moss. Now, mix these things well together. These ingredients will make a nutrient filled potting soil that is clean, porous, and moisture retaining,.

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.

The Bulbs Need A Pot

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. This will prevent the soil from falling out of the hole during planting, and keep the hole from clogging up later.

Begin by filling the pot half-full of soil mix. Keep the pointed ends up when placing the bulbs in the container. Plant the bulbs as closely 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.

Leave The Bulbs In The Dark

Snowdrops, daffodils and crocus all work well. You can use any early blooming bulb, however.  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. To force these early bloomers takes about 12 weeks. Tulips and bulbs like them need longer, about 16 weeks. The flowers will be taller if they are left in cold storage longer.

If bulbs aren’t left in storage long enough, the result is 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. 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.

Once the bulbs are at this point, they should be placed in indirect lighting for a while before moving them to direct sunlight. Be sure the soil doesn’t dry out.

It’s best to first move bulbs to a fairly cool location if possible, such as an unheated entryway or closed off back bedroom, where the temperatures are in the ’50s, before moving them on to the heated areas of the house, and into more direct sunlight.

Give The Bulbs A New Life.

If you wish to reuse the bulbs, after blooms die, cut the flower stems off. 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. Being forced to bloom weakens the bulb, so don’t try to make the same bulbs bloom inside a second time. Any bloom from forcing bulbs a second time would be small.

Planting the bulbs in the garden allows them to return to a natural schedule with the seasons. After a year or two they should be back on schedule and making a beautiful display of blooms at the appropriate times.