From Bulbs To Beautiful Flowers Indoors

Enjoying Indoor Blooms

Brighten up the dreary winter! Start in the fall to force spring bulbs indoors. It's easy and fun to grow bulbs indoors, and takes up very little space. The trick is to simulate a short winter. Make bulbs think it's winter by placing them in a refrigerator, a cool closet, or even in a foam cooler place on a patio or balcony. This process will make the bulbs start to sprout in preparation for spring and grow sturdy roots.

Get Good Soil

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. Mix these three things together well. 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.

Pots For Planting

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.

Now fill the pot half-full of soil mix. Keep the pointed ends up when placing the bulbs in the container. Place the bulbs as close together as possible, but don't let them actually 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

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 will take about 12 weeks to force these early bloomers. It takes longer for bulbs like tulips to be force, generally about 16 weeks. The longer the bulbs are in cold storage, the taller the flowers will be.

Smaller plants and sometimes flowers that start to grown then die is the result of bulbs being in storage too short a time.

On The Light Side.

When it's close time for the bulbs to start blooming, begin checking the pots occasionally. Once 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.

When the bulbs reach this stage of development, 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.

It also works better 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.

The bulbs can be reused if you cut the flower stems off after the blooms die. Give the foliage plenty of sunlight to allow continued growth. This gathers nutrients for the bulb 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. Trying to make the bulbs bloom inside a second time doesn't work well because the bulbs are weakened from being forced to bloom inside. Any bloom from forcing bulbs a second time 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.