Growing Bulbs Indoors

Indoor Blooms From Bulbs

Want to have gorgeous blooms inside in the middle of winter? Start growing spring bulbs in the fall. It can be a lot of fun to grow bulbs indoors and make them bloom, and takes up very little room. The idea is to simulate a short winter. 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. This simulated winter will cause the bulbs to grow sturdy roots and start to sprout in preparation for spring.

Start With The Right Potting Soil

Use any good commercial organic potting soil mix, or you can make your own soil to plant the bulbs in. It’s pretty easy to make.Use 2 parts peat moss, one part perlite, and one part sterilized potting soil. Mix all these things together well. This mixture makes 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.

A Home For The Bulbs - The Pot

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.

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.

Time Out In The Dark

Crocus, daffodils and snowdrops or any other early blooming bulbs work well.  You can get some lovely bulbs to use from many places. For instance, click here for Daffodils from Breck’s, plus many other lovely flowering bulbs). It takes about 12 weeks to force these early bloomers. It will take longer for bulbs like tulips, generally about 16 weeks. The longer the bulbs are in cold storage, the taller the flowers will be.

Not enough time in storage will result in smaller plants and sometimes flowers that start to grown then die.

Time For Light.

Once enough time has elapsed, you can begin checking the pots every day or two. When you see fine white roots coming out of the drainage holes, and/or shoots that are 2 to 3 inches above the soil, it’s time to take the pots out of cold storage.

Bulbs should be placed in indirect lighting for a while at this point before moving them to direct sunlight. Be carefuly not to allow the soil to 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.

Give The Bulbs A New Life.

After the blooms die, if you want to reuse the bulbs,cut the flower stems off. Let the foliage have plenty of sunlight for continued growth. This will gather the nutrients the bulb needs to bloom next year.

Don’t pull the leaves off after the foliage withers. Leave the leaves on the bulbs and store them in their pots in a cool, dry place until they can be planted outside. Since being forced to bloom inside weakens the bulb, don’t try to make it blooom a second time inside. Any bloom from a second go round 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.

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