Coax Bulbs Into Indoor Flowers

If you’ve got the pre-winter blahs and are missing all those cheerful flowers that used to be blooming in your outdoor garden, you can try your hand at coaxing bulbs into flowering indoors. Two common bulbs that are perfect for the holidays are paperwhites and amaryllis. These can both be planted in a non-draining container.

Grab some containers. Clear glass containers will make it easy to check water levels, but you don’t have to use glass. I think these both look amazing in wood boxes.

Grab some potting mix or pebbles. Never use soil from your yard for indoor bulbs. Get a good mixed potting soil from the nursery. Pebbles is a relative term. You can actually use polished river rocks, glass marbles or plain old beach glass or even decorative colored gravel.  Make sure to rinse all your pebbles so that they’re free of dust and grime.

To plant your bulbs, pour in about 2 inches of your pebbles of choice then add a light layer of aquarium charcoal (rinsed) then more pebbles. Note that while you can also use soil these flowers look awesome in pebbles. If you choose pebbles, set the bulbs root-side down on top of the pebbles. If you’re using soil, only fill the container with enough soil to barely cover the bulb. The bulbs need to placed root-side down with just their tops sticking out.

Add room temp water – enough so that it comes right below the top of your bulb (for paperwhites) or enough so that the bottom layer of gravel is covered (for amaryllis). Place your containers in a draft free area and re-water when the level falls 1/4 inch (for paperwhites) and right at the bottom of the roots for amaryllis. You should see nice blooms in 4-8 weeks.

Once your paperwhite blooms die, toss the bulb it won’t re-bloom (at least not that I’ve ever seen or heard). You can actually make amaryllis bloom again BUT only if you take special care of it after you plant it. For example you’ll need to keep it barely moist and cool. It’s kind of a lot of trouble for simple indoor blooms, but you can read a full how-to at the United State National Arboretum.

If you’re looking to plant other bulbs indoors visit the following…

• Hyacinth
• Purple Shamrock
• Daffodils
• Crocus
• Tulips

[image via stock.xchng]