Category: Outdoors

Forcing bulbs for early spring blossoms indoors

I love tulips. Fortunately, our dog Rowan keeps the deer away, so I can grow them in our garden. But if you have a deer problem and can’t grow tulips (deer think you’ve planted treats for them), I have a solution. Plant some in pots now so they will bloom for you indoors in March or April.

Almost any spring-blooming bulb can be “forced” to bloom indoors, but tulips take the longest: four months. If you pot them up in early November, they won’t be ready to start growing leaves and buds until March. But let’s back up a bit and see what they need to thrive and bloom.

First, they need a cool or cold place to rest for four months of dormancy. I am lucky: I have a cold basement that I keep just above freezing, which is ideal. Anything over 50 degrees will encourage them to send up green shoots too early. If they do that, they probably won’t bloom.

A garage attached to the house might be suitable for forcing bulbs. Or maybe you can put them in an unheated mud room or spare fridge. If the growing medium freezes it won’t kill the bulbs, but they won’t progress toward the hoped-for bloom time. They need to be growing roots and getting ready to bloom.

You need a suitable container for forcing bulbs. I use an Italian-made red clay container that is 16 inches long, 5 inches wide and 5 inches deep. It is handsome and will look good on my windowsill when I bring it up from the cold basement to blossom. You can, of course, use a plastic pot or a handsome ceramic pot. I have even used my window box for a bigger splash of color. But anything you use should have a drainage hole and something to catch the water that may leak out of it.

Next, you need a good growing medium. You can buy potting soil, or you can reuse potting soil from last summer’s annuals that were in pots on the deck or steps. A robust annual grows lots of roots, which you need to separate from the soil by shaking or banging the soil loose. The soil can then be used, but you should mix it with fresh potting soil, too.

Fill the container you plan to use about halfway with the growing medium. If the soil mix is dry, moisten it well before placing the bulbs in the pot. Then push the bulbs into the soil mix, cover the bulbs with more mix and pat it down firmly. You can place them closer together in the pot than you would if planting them outside in the soil. In fact, I plant some bulbs shoulder to shoulder.

You will need to check on the pots once a month to be sure the potting mix has not dried out. If it has, water lightly, but never get the growing medium soggy. But if it is too dry, nothing will happen, either.

Rodents are a problem outdoors — they love to eat tulip bulbs. But if you live in an old house you may also have mice or squirrels in your basement that will eat the bulbs. So I cover each pot with hardware cloth (a wire mesh) or a small piece of board. They won’t eat daffodil bulbs, but I have had rodents dig them up and throw them on the floor in disgust!

When selecting bulbs for forcing, always choose early or mid-season bloomers. I want early blossoms while snow is still on the ground. This is true whether selecting tulip varieties or daffodils. Daffodils generally only need three months of dormancy. Crocus and other small bulbs only need two months of cold storage.

My favorite daffodil for forcing is the Tete-a-Tete. These little gems are short and early, and produce lots of flowers, two or three flowers per stem. This year I potted up a dozen 4-inch pots with three bulbs each. These should be ready to come up into the warmth of the house in about 10 weeks, and ready to gift to friends a couple of weeks later while in bud. There is nothing like a blooming daffodil to pick up a person’s spirits in late winter.

Another blooming treat is the paperwhite. This is a type of daffodil that comes ready to grow. Most people like to set them in a bowl filled part way with stones and add water until it just “kisses” their bottoms. Put on a sunny windowsill, these bulbs will blossom in four to six weeks. Just keep on adding water as it evaporates or is sucked up by the paperwhites.

Paperwhites in bowls of pebbles sometimes get too tall and tip over. Some people add just a soupcon of gin to the water when they start to grow, stunting their growth. Me? I just try to rearrange the stones to prevent tipping. Another way to do it is to grow them in potting soil. But you should not bury the paperwhite bulbs if you do that. Leave half the bulb above the soil line.

A nice project for your garden club would be to pot up some Tete-a-Tete or other bulbs now for later use as gifts to the ill or elderly, or anyone who needs them. I know one club that is planning on doing so this year.

Featured photo: Five to seven tulip bulbs fit nicely in this pot. Photo by Henry Homeyer.

Put a few here and there, or make a big splash of color

As a boy I was surrounded by hundreds of spring daffodils every year. We lived in rural Connecticut, and the people we bought our house from had planted daffodils by the hundreds in our woods. The woods consisted of sugar maples, huge ones, with a sprinkling of ash trees, providing dappled sunshine. We had wide raked paths and all along the paths were daffodils in April and May. We would pick 50 or more at a time and bring them into the house and put them in vases everywhere.

So when I bought my house here in Cornish Flat in 1970, I started planting bulbs, too. Except for my years in Africa with the Peace Corps, I have probably planted some every year for over 50 years. It is now getting tough to find places to plant more, but somehow I manage. One trick I use is to put those little white plant tags pushed almost all the way into the ground (so I see less of them) each time I plant a new batch. That way I don’t inadvertently dig up some while trying to find a blank palette.

The first step is to buy bulbs. My local feed-and-grain store has them, as do garden centers and most grocery stores. You can order bulbs online if you want things beyond the common ones. But I like to try first to buy locally.

Next, find an appropriate place to plant them. If you are planting small, early-spring bulbs like snowdrops or glory of the snow, you can plant them in the lawn. Just poke holes in the sod for them. Their foliage dies back early. But if you plant daffodils or tulips in the lawn, you won’t be able to mow the lawn until their foliage has replenished the energy in the bulbs, which for daffodils is July 4 or thereabouts.

I like to plant a big splash of color in one place. Rather than dig small holes with a trowel or auger, I like to plant a minimum of 25 daffodils or tulips in a wide single hole. To do this, I lay out the bulbs on the ground where I want them, spacing them 3 inches or so apart. I like a planting of bulbs to be an oval or teardrop shape as opposed to a rectangle. That seems more natural, but do whatever pleases you.

Then I take a hand tool and draw a line around the space designated for the bulbs. I remove the bulbs, and dig out the soil. I don’t dump it on the lawn — I put it in a wheelbarrow or on a tarp so I don’t make a mess on the lawn. I discard any stones as I dig.

For depth, follow the directions on the package. Big bulbs like daffodils and tulips generally should be planted at least 6 inches deep. Little things like crocus only need to be 3 inches deep. If I dig down 6 inches, I then add some bulb booster or organic fertilizer in the hole and then loosen the soil for another 2 inches with my CobraHead weeder (or a three-pronged scratcher). If the soil is heavy clay or very sandy, I add a couple of inches of compost and stir that in.

Next I place the bulbs in the hole in a somewhat random pattern, not straight lines. I wiggle the bulbs around so that the base of each bulb is near the bottom of the loosened and enriched soil. Finally, I shovel the soil from the wheelbarrow back into the soil, being careful not to dislodge my bulbs. If the soil is really crummy, I throw some away and mix in compost to replace it. Bulbs need good drainage.

What about hungry animals that want to eat your flowers before you can enjoy them? Squirrels and chipmunks love tulip bulbs and have been known to watch from a distance as gardeners plant them — and dig them up almost right away. Some sources claim that adding sharp crushed oyster shells on top of the soil, or near the top, will deter them. I doubt that. Oyster shells won’t deter a tulip-hungry gray squirrel.

Wire mesh buried in the soil above the bulbs will deter squirrels, however. The problem is that when you cut it to size, the edges are razor-sharp. When I interviewed the White House gardener at the end of the Clinton years, he reported that they kept squirrels away from their bulbs by feeding them all the corn they could eat. A well-fed squirrel won’t bother to dig for tulips, he said. That’s not a good plan, in my view, it will attract more squirrels. I say, if you want tulips, plant them and hope for the best. Having a dog helps, too.

Deer are another problem. Deer love tulip buds and flowers, and will often eat them just before they open. Although there are deer repellent sprays, I think the best solution there is to temporarily surround beds of tulips with wire fencing. Chicken wire comes in 3-foot-wide rolls that can easily be supported with thin stakes and will keep deer away from your tulips.

Lastly, if you want tulips on your table, you might consider buying them. Local greenhouses near me grow them by the thousand and sell them through my local food coop at a fair price in season. Then you can focus your bulb efforts on things that deer and squirrels won’t eat.

The best bulb in deer country is the daffodil. They are mildly poisonous, so squirrels won’t eat the bulbs and deer won’t eat the flowers. There are over a dozen different named categories of daffodils, and a wide range of colors beyond yellow: white, orange, and even some with a green eye, or center. They will bloom early, mid-season or late in the spring. So buy plenty and enjoy a pest-free spring.

Featured photo: Plant with the pointy end up. Photo by Henry Homeyer.