Bring Outside Bloomers Inside
The way to have beautiful flowers indoors in the middle of winter is to start forcing them in the fall. Growing bulbs indoors takes up little space, and it’s easy and fun. 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. This process will make the bulbs start to sprout in preparation for spring and grow sturdy roots.
Get The Right Dirt
Use any good commercial organic potting soil mix, or you can make your own soil to plant the bulbs in. You can do it easily. 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,.
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
Once you have your soil prepared, choose the pot you want to use and place a few pieces of broken crockery over the drainage holes. This keeps the soil from falling out while you’re planting the bulbs, and keeps the hole from clogging up later.
Now fill the pot half-full of soil mix. Keep the pointed ends up when placing the bulbs in the container. They should be planted as close together as possible, without actually letting the bulbs touch. Put enough soil mix in to fill the pot, then the bulbs thoroughly from the top or immerse in a tub of water. That will settle the soil around the bulbs.
Now You Wait
Snowdrops, daffodils and crocus all work well. You can use any early blooming bulb, however. Good quality bulbs for this use are available at many places. For instance, you can click here for Daffodils from Breck’s and many other lovely flowering bulbs. To force these early bloomers takes about 12 weeks. It takes more time for bulbs like tulips, generally about 16 weeks. The flowers will be taller if they are left in cold storage longer.
Too short a time in storage will result in smaller plants and sometimes flowers that start to grown then die.
Into The Light.
When it’s close time for the bulbs to start blooming, begin checking the pots occasionally. Take the pots out of cold storage once there are shoots a couple of inches above the soil.
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.
Don’t Let The Bulbs Die - Use Them Outside.
If you wish to reuse the bulbs, after blooms die, cut the flower stems off. The leaves gather nutrients for the bulbs next year’s blooms, so be sure the foilage has plenty of sunlight to continue to grow.
After the foliage withers, don’t pull the leaves off. Leave the leaves on the bulbs and store them in their pots in a cool, dry place until they can be planted outside. Don’t try to make the same bulbs bloom inside again, as the bulb is weakened from being forced to bloom. 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.