Blooms Indoors - Force Bulbs

Making Blooms Indoors

To have lovely spring flowers indoors in the middle of winter, start the process in the fall. Growing bulbs indoors takes up little space, and it’s easy and fun. Creating a simulated short winter does 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. By doing this, they will 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 not hard to make your own potting soil.  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 clean, porous, moisture retaining, nutrient filled potting soil.

Unsterilized soil from your outside garden because it may contain bacterial or fungal pathogens that could infect the plant roots, so it's better not to use it.

Find A Pot To Plant In

Choose the pot you want to use after the soil is ready, 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.

Next, fill the pot half-full of soil mix. With the pointed ends up, place the bulbs in the container. Plant the bulbs as closely together as possible, without actually letting the bulbs touch. The pot should then be filled with soil mix. Water the bulbs thoroughly from the top or immerse them in a tub of water. That settles the soil around the bulbs.

Bulbs Need Time In The Dark

Crocus, daffodils and snowdrops work well, or any other early blooming bulbs.  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. It takes about 12 weeks to force these early bloomers. Tulips and bulbs like them need longer, about 16 weeks. The flowers will be taller if they are left in cold storage longer.

Bulbs that are in storage for too short a time will have smaller plants and aborted flowers.

The Bulbs Need Light.

After enough time has passed and it's close time for the bulbs to bloom, start chiecking the pots every day or two. When 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.

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 good if you can 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.

New Life For Used Bulbs.

If you wish to reuse the bulbs, after blooms die, cut the flower stems off. Give the foliage plenty of sunlight to allow continued growth. This gathers nutrients for the bulb to bloom next year.

After the foliage withers, don’t pull the leaves off. Leave them be and store the bulbs in the pots in a cool, dry place until they can be planted outside. The bulb is weakened from being forced to bloom inside. Trying to force it to bloom a second time inside doesn't work well. Blooms, if any, produced from a second forcing would be small.

When the bulbs are placed back in the garden, this allows them to return to a natural schedule. After a coulple of years, they should once more produce beautiful blooms.