Forcing Bulbs

Flowers for your winter windowsill

By Amy McDowell

Snowflakes are flying and the tulips I ordered last spring sit naked in the breezeway, huddled together in their mesh sack. Shame on me. They should’ve been tucked snugly in the ground a month ago. But I know I’m not the only one. During a potting soil expedition to the garden center two days ago, I saw crate upon crate of bulbs—and they weren’t even on clearance sale.

Now, with my huge 3-cubic-foot bag of potting soil, I’ll pot those leftover tulips, chill them and force them to bloom indoors this winter.

Tulips, Daffodils, Hyacinth, Crocus and Muscari are all great for forcing into bloom indoors. Their tender presence will usher spring into your home.

Any pot will do—potting can be as simple as placing one bulb in a disposable plastic party cup with decorative aquarium gravel for support and water to the bulb’s base. I’m not sure how tulips would fare in this environment; they seem to require potting with a little more dignity, but most Daffodils, Hyacinth and Crocus bloom easily when grown in a simple setup. Hyacinth and Crocus vases designed to suspend the bulbs above a water reservoir are another easy solution, and with extra bulbs stored in a paper bag in the fruit drawer of your refrigerator, you can pop a new bulb into the vase each time the bloom fades.

For potting, use quality lightweight potting soil. Press soil into the bottom of the pot, set the bulbs in snugly with the pointy side up and cover with soil. Vigorous bulb roots in containers will heave the soil, so leave the soil an inch below the rim of the pot. Cover the soil with decorative pebbles or moss if you wish. Then place the potted bulbs into a cold storage area. Temperatures between 35 and 48 degrees Fahrenheit are ideal. If you store them in a cold frame, unheated garage, attic, porch or breezeway, you’ll have to insulate them with several heavy blankets or a generous layer of mulch or straw. Allow a 15-week cold period for Tulips, Crocus and Muscari, 14 weeks for Daffodils and 12 weeks for Hyacinth.

Here’s hoping every one of those leftover bulbs at the garden center brings a scent of spring into someone’s home this winter.

Amy McDowell is an Iowa Certified Nursery Professional. She has a degree in horticulture and has worked in the field for ten years. She lives and gardens in Polk County.

Spring-Blooming Bulbs

Spring blooms come to those who plant fall bulbs

By Amy McDowell

After tearing down the fall bulb display at the garden center where I once worked, we swept up two dozen miscellaneous bulbs from the floor. “You want those?” my boss asked, ready to pitch them from the dustpan into the garbage. Smiling, I gathered them into a paper bag and took them home. It was late in the season and the weather was chilly, but the ground was not yet frozen. I planted them in a small cluster where some annuals had collapsed after a frost. The ragamuffin group would bloom in a haphazard tapestry in the spring, I imagined, but better that they create a goofy patchwork of color in my garden than rot in a landfill.

In the spring, to my surprise and delight, that little cluster of leftover bulbs charmed both me and everyone else who visited my garden. Tiny purple and yellow crocus trumpeted spring from just four inches above the earth, followed by eight or ten daffodils in gold and white and a dozen crisp tulips in red, gold and purple. The sweet fragrance of purple and pink hyacinths could seduce me to visit the riotous hodgepodge bed from the moment I stepped outdoors.

You can’t go wrong with spring bulbs, it turns out. Springtime success will greet you whether it’s 7,000 bulbs in vast beds of color, as I once planted for an employer, or a handful of delicate bluish-purple Scilla siberica next to a path.

Daffodils are my favorite spring-flowering bulbs because they return loyally year after year. Pests won’t dig them up and eat them like they do with tasty tulips, so they multiply over the years, forming generous clumps where a single bulb was once planted. Among the thousands of varieties, you’ll find trumpets, large-cupped, small-cupped, doubles and split coronas. I went crazy for miniature daffodils for several years, growing every one I could find. The most darling, in my book, is 'Tete-a-Tete' for its bright little blooms and short stature. It blooms beautifully with the purple Crocus tommasinianus ‘Ruby Giant’.

I plant a couple dozen tulips each fall to please my husband, who loves them as much as I love daffodils. The peony-flowering varieties planted in the front yard are visible more than a block away.

Finally, I’ll plant a dozen bold orange ‘Treffer’ Asiatic lilies this fall because I’ve been crazy over the Asiatics all season. You won’t find a lot of orange in my garden, but I can surely find a spot for a vivid orange zing. Orange, after all, is the new black, according to my friend Katherine.

Plant some bulbs this fall; the time is right. Plant daffodils, tulips and lilies. Fill the nooks and crannies of your perennial borders with little cuties like Iris reticulata, Pushkinia, Scilla, Galanthus and Crocus. Bulbs are fun, foolproof and rewarding.

Amy McDowell is an Iowa Certified Nursery Professional. She has a degree in horticulture and has worked in the field for ten years. She lives and gardens in Polk County.