Spring gardening starts indoors

A yogurt container stuffed with species tulip bulbs, Tulipa linifolia, forced to bloom early indoors, provides a welcome splash of winter color. Photo by Barb Gorges.

Spring gardening starts indoors: bulb forcing and vegetable seedlings

Published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle Mar. 5, 2022.

By Barb Gorges

            March is the time of year to ignore garden news from balmier parts of the country, especially Facebook posts with greening landscapes with bright flowers and ripening vegetables. But there is plenty going on here—indoors.

Bulb forcing experiment

            The flowers I see on my windowsill late winter are usually phalaenopsis orchids and amaryllis.

            This year, I also have bulbs I’m forcing—the ones I couldn’t find time to plant last fall, threw in the fridge in early November and took out and potted in late January. After they bloom indoors, I will plant them outside, when the soil thaws.

            These weren’t bulbs typically recommended for forcing, like hyacinth. Now I see why. Iris reticulata, the rock garden iris, put up tall spikey, grassy leaves (that our cats chewed a bit before I put them out of reach), with the blooms hiding in the leaves. In the garden, the flower stems would be short and the leaves shorter. I blame the low-e glass in our windows for the missing wavelengths affecting growth.

            The species tulips, delicate little things from which typical tulips are descended, got leggy, too. But at least the flowers were above the leaves. They started blooming at the very end of February, adding a touch of hope to those below-zero days.

            Siberian squill also grew leggy—and then fell over, its little blue flowers never opening quite like they do in the patch I have in the backyard, which blooms in late April.

This is our seed starter from Lee Valley Tools. Pour water in the reservoir and wicking (hidden) delivers it to the open bottoms of the planting cells. That and the plastic dome keeps the soil moist. When seedlings emerge, we remove the dome. When the seedlings have one set of true leaves we transplant them in 2.5-inch plastic pots we’ve saved from nursery purchases. We may up pot one more time before plants are ready for the garden in late May. Photo by Barb Gorges.

Vegetables and other annuals

            March is time for planning your summer garden.

            Thinking about growing vegetables and annual flowers? If you don’t want to dig up lawn and or weeds, consider containers. A tomato plant will need at least a 5-gallon bucket with plentiful drainage holes. Fill it half with potting soil and half with compost. Squeeze in a few flowers in larger containers.

Raised beds can be built on top of existing lawn or weeds. To suppress aggressive weeds before filling it with weed-free garden dirt and compost, you might want to put down a layer of cardboard first.  But if it’s a shallow raised bed, sides less than 18 inches, the cardboard might cramp the vegetable roots.

            One advantage to container gardening is that you can change the location if you discover your tomato plant isn’t getting at least 6 hours of sun, is getting too hot mid-afternoon, is farther than you want to drag a hose, is in too much wind, or is too far from the house.

            Unless you have a hoop house (affordable substitute for a greenhouse), pick short season vegetable varieties suited to our short growing season. Seed packets will show “days to maturity” so look for vegetables that will give you edibles in under 90 days. The count starts when you transplant a seedling after the average last day of frost, May 25. The date of our average first frost is September 20. A 55-day tomato will give you fruit by the end of July or beginning of August.

            When figuring out when to start seeds indoors, count back from May 25 and allow about 6-8 weeks or whatever the seed package says.

            Some of the best tomatoes for our area will be available as transplants at the Laramie County Master Gardeners plant sale May 14 at the Event Center at Archer but wait to safely plant them.

            Whenever you “up pot” or transplant almost any plant—annuals, perennials, shrubs, trees—the latest advice is to gently remove as much old soil from the roots first so that the plant will establish faster in its new location.

            Forget starting plants in peat pots. You are supposed to be able to pop the whole pot and plant into the garden but here in Cheyenne, you will discover by fall few roots ever penetrated the peat barrier.

            Start thinking about how you will protect your veggies from hail. If you are growing intensively in a container or raised bed, you can knock together a hail guard. It looks like a card table that stands taller than the plants, but the playing surface is hardware cloth, a rough wire mesh.

            To be a successful vegetable grower, make a commitment to check your plants every day. Catching pest and disease problems early means you have time to get horticultural advice from the Laramie County Extension office or the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens.

            Every day, pick out the tiny weeds. You’ll hardly disturb the soil and all the hardworking microorganisms in it. Cut large annual weeds off at the soil surface instead of pulling them. A couple inches of mulch keeps most weeds from sprouting and keeps the soil moist longer.

            Gardening can contribute to mental health, but only if you spend time in the garden with your plants.

Iris reticulata, also known as rock garden iris, is another small spring-blooming bulb that can be forced to bloom indoors in winter. Plant the bulbs outside in early summer and they could rebloom next spring, if not the year after that. Photo by Barb Gorges.

Gardeners busy in February

Amaryllis flower begins to open. Photo by Barb Gorges.

“Gardeners are busy in February” was published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle Feb. 6, 2021.

By Barb Gorges

            February is a busy time for those of us who enjoy a plant-filled life.

            The first half of the month is overshadowed by Valentine’s Day. Did you know that 80 percent of American-sold cut flowers are grown in Columbia and flown here? Those growing conditions are often toxic to the environment and workers. Read about how that happened at www.BrownPoliticalReview.org, by searching for “Veriflora.”

            Veriflora, a program offered through SCS Global Services, is an attempt to encourage sustainable ornamental horticulture. You are most likely to find certified plants and flowers somewhere like Whole Foods, but try The Home Depot too.

            If your beloved is a gardener, try a gift certificate to a nearby or online nursery instead. Or one of the myriad garden books from Timber Press.

            Winter is when gardeners gather for lectures and conferences—virtually this year. Here in Cheyenne the 7^th Annual Habitat Hero Workshop in mid-January featuring Douglas Tallamy and two other speakers had more than 300 people register. You can watch the recordings by using the links at www.CheyenneAudubon.wordpress.com, on the Habitat Hero tab.

            Feb. 27 is the Landscaping with Colorado Native Plants Conference, with a day’s worth of speakers. See https://landscapingwithcoloradonativeplants.wordpress.com/. There you can find the speakers’ handouts from conferences dating back to 2017.

            Fort Collins Nursery has its usual list of Saturday classes, now through early March: https://fortcollinsnursery.com.

Amaryllis flower at its peak. Photo by Barb Gorges.

February is the peak of my amaryllis collection flowering. I don’t put the plants through dormancy to try to get them to bloom at Christmas. Instead, I keep them watered and green year-round and they naturally bloom anytime between January and April.

I now have two Phalaenopsis orchids and their bloom schedule is similar. The new one started blooming shortly after it arrived by mail last April, and a couple flowers never dropped off. At the end of January, as I write this, they are still hanging on, surrounded by fresh blooms.

I might have hyacinth blooming by mid-month. In the fall I buried a pot of bulbs out in the vegetable garden. I marked the calendar for Feb. 2 to dig them up and bring them in.

The geraniums I brought in last fall are also blooming, so I don’t think Mark will be thinking I need more flowers for Valentine’s Day.

February isn’t too late to buy or order seeds. Last year, seed sellers ran short trying to keep up with demand—one garden news source says the pandemic encouraged 16 million people to garden for the first time last spring. Everyone should be better prepared this year.

Try regional online seed catalogs:

–High Desert Seed of Montrose, Colorado

–Wild Mountain Seeds of Carbondale, Colorado

–High Ground Gardens of Crestone, Colorado

–Snake River Seeds of Idaho

–Grand Prismatic Seed Company of Salt Lake City, Utah (also carries seeds for dye plants)

February is my last chance to get my winter sowing done. This is the technique well suited to cold-weather vegetables and perennial seeds, especially those that require cold treatment.

In a translucent milk jug that has been sliced horizontally just below the handle, I put wet potting soil about 3 inches deep. Seeds are planted at a depth of twice their width and then the top of the milk jug is forced into the bottom—they are flexible so it works. Leave the jugs on the north or east side of a wall so they don’t get too much sun.

Maybe move them into a sunnier location in late April, early May, when seedlings start popping up. No expensive lights or heat mats required. Just make sure the potting soil doesn’t dry out and that you slashed some slits in the bottoms of the jugs so that melting snow doesn’t cause all the contents to float.

Itching to spend time outside? Have any tree or shrub pruning to do?

With our lack of snow this winter, you have plenty of time to get out a measuring tape and measure your yard and plot its current accoutrements on paper. Make copies so you can sketch in different ideas for next season. I want to enlarge my front native/perennial/pollinator beds using the ergonomic shovel, HERShovel, Mark gave me for Christmas.

Finally, visit the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens conservatory. Walk through the tropical display on the first floor, following the arrows. The humidity will feel wonderful. Across the lobby in the Orangerie, continuing through March 13, is the Annual Glass Art Show, full of all the colors we crave in winter.  

Updates: Bulb forcing and amaryllis seeds

Hyacinth bulbs forced to bloom indoors in winter were successful. Feb. 24, 2018. Photo by Barb Gorges.

By Barb Gorges

Back in October 2017, https://cheyennegardengossip.wordpress.com/2017/10/17/bulb-forcing-brings-spring-indoors-mid-winter/, I wrote about two methods of forcing bulbs. One was the classic hyacinth bulb in the bulb-forcing vase. I also tried three crocus bulbs in three tiny vases. The bulbs were left in the refrigerator for a couple of months to cool and taken out in early January and put in the vases.

Hyacinth in bulb-forcing vase. Photo by Barb Gorges.

Also in early January I brought in the pot of hyacinth and the pot of crocus that were buried in the vegetable garden and covered with a foot of leaf mulch.

The bulbs in vases didn’t do well. They couldn’t seem to grow enough roots. That hyacinth stalk of flowers was about 15 percent the size of the ones in the pot.

I felt sorry for the crocus bulbs in the tiny vases and soon planted them in dirt where they were much happier. That proves you could cool your bulbs in the fridge and then plant them in soil, without wintering them in the garden. But the pot of crocus that did spend two months buried did very well. Interestingly, the yellow crocus bloomed before any of the shades of purple.

I would force bulbs again. If I plant the hyacinth bulbs individually, they would be easier to share with friends, or I could stagger the dates I bring them indoors, prolonging the season of sweet-smelling flowers.

Amaryllis

Typically, my amaryllis bloom in February or March. This year they started blooming in mid-January. Only one decided to hold out until the end of February. Just before the petals of one of the early bloomers started to wilt, I touched the anthers to the pistil and now the seed pods are swelling.

Read about my amaryllis propagation experience in the December 2017 post: https://cheyennegardengossip.wordpress.com/2017/12/18/amaryllis-reblooming-propagation/.

 

Amaryllis reblooming & propagation

Amaryllis is a popular flower at Christmas time, but without forcing, it prefers to bloom in spring. Photo by Barb Gorges.

Published Dec. 17, 2017, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, “Amaryllis beyond the holidays: reblooming and propagation.”

By Barb Gorges

In the pantheon of Christmas season flowering plants, I’ll take the elegant amaryllis and its big blossoms any day. Oh wait, I don’t have any more room on my windowsill.

What started as two amaryllis gifts 10 years ago has become numerous “daughters” and seedlings.

The amaryllis you see listed in catalogs and for sale at garden centers, florists and grocery stores during the holidays are intended to be disposable. But it really isn’t difficult to get them to bloom again, though there is a trick to get them to perform next Christmas. Growing them from seed you collect yourself takes only patience.

Beware

Beware of amaryllis bulbs encased in colorful wax decorated with glitter. They flower without any need for dirt or water because the bulbs are large and contain nutrients needed for blooming. Just set them on a saucer. But it seems to me cruel and unusual punishment to bind a bulb in wax and let it die after flowering.

Beware the decorative pot that may come with your bulb. It doesn’t have a drainage hole. No fuss, no muss. But if you want to keep your holiday amaryllis from year to year, replant it in a pot with a drainage hole. The proper pot size leaves about an inch between the side of the bulb and the side of the pot. Plant the bulb so that nearly half of it is above the soil.

Watering and fertilizing

Without a drainage hole, you are never sure if you have given a plant enough water or if there’s a big underground puddle rotting the roots. It’s best to water a potted plant a bit at a time until water emerges through the drainage hole and then dump the excess water.

Watering amaryllis once a week works in the winter climate of our Cheyenne house which has 20-40 percent humidity, is at 64 degrees Fahrenheit during the daytime and cooler at night. The peat-based potting soil holds water well enough, but I allow the top inch of soil to dry out. Little black fungus gnats mean I’m watering too much.

I fertilize my amaryllis maybe at 25 percent or less of what is recommended on houseplant fertilizer packages. My friend Jane Dorn has an enormous pot of enormous bulbs that bloom two to three times a year and she only fertilizes once a year.

Dormancy for forcing or wintering

If you want to force your amaryllis to bloom for Christmas next year, treat it as a houseplant over the summer. In early September, unearth it carefully, wash off the dirt, trim the roots to 1-2 inches long and trim the leaves 1-2 inches above the neck.

You Tube’s Amaryllis Man Charlie Johnston says to let the bulbs dry for three weeks before refrigerating them for 6 weeks. You can also do this if you don’t have room indoors in the winter for a lot of big floppy-leaved plants.

Take the bulbs out 5-6 weeks before you want them to bloom and repot them. Bulbs are in this condition when you buy them for holiday blooming.

Reblooming naturally

I don’t let my amaryllis go dormant. The first year I had one, I decided to keep watering it year-round and it bloomed again in spring following the next Christmas.

I put my amaryllis plants out for the summer on our covered patio. The roof is translucent plastic, shady by afternoon. It also protects plants from hail and hard rain. I put the plants back inside a sunny window in September and wait.

Looking at my records, flowering begins anytime between the end of February and early April and lasts for a month. My two varieties don’t bloom at the same time as each other.

This pot of pink amaryllis has a mother bulb, two blooming daughter bulbs on either side, and a couple baby bulbs sending up their first leaves. Photo by Barb Gorges.

Mothers and daughters

If you keep your amaryllis from year to year, you may discover your bulb gets bigger and bigger and/or produces offsets, or daughters. You can leave these new bulbs attached and let them mature and bloom. You may have to accommodate them with a bigger pot at some point.

Or, you can carefully unearth the whole mass and break off the daughters and repot them separately, to give away or keep. The Amaryllis Man soaks his bulbs, leaves and roots in a fungicide for 10 minutes before planting, but I haven’t found that necessary.

See the Amaryllis Man for how to force daughter bulbs to develop by “chipping,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAoIelfGWdg.

Each amaryllis flower has six anthers and a stylus. Pollination happens when the pollen on the anthers starts dusting everything and the tip of the stylus opens. Photo by Barb Gorges.

Seedlings

I found growing amaryllis from seed is surprisingly easy, although it can take four years to get blooms.

First, make sure the flowers get pollinated. I had one plant flower in the summer outside where some insects did the job. I’ve also had indoor plants pollinate themselves or I can help them.

Amaryllis flowers make an excellent demonstration of plant reproduction. There are 6 yellow pollen-tipped anthers. You’ll know when the pollen is ripe because it starts dusting everything. At that moment, the end of the single stylus should be open. You can dab pollen on the end of it.

If you are successful, the ovary will begin to swell right behind the flower petals. A three-lobed pod will develop. Leave it on the flower stem. When it turns brown, it will split open and you can collect the seeds.

Each tiny seed is encased in a flat black wafer. You can give the wafers a couple weeks to cure. Their germination rate will be highest if you sprout them right after that.

The wafer-like seeds of the amaryllis can be floated on water until they sprout in three or four weeks and can be transplanted into soil. Photo by Barb Gorges.

While you can start these seeds as you would flower or vegetable seeds, in a flat of a seed-starting medium like a perlite-peat mix kept moist, I found it more fun and easier (no constant checking soil moisture) to float the seeds on water. After three or four weeks, they sprout tiny leaves and roots with the tiniest bulge of the future bulb. Once they are big enough to grab, you can transplant them as you would any seedling.

But now comes the hard part, waiting for the seedlings to grow up. The Amaryllis Man says some will bloom as early as three years old, but usually it’s four.

Sigh.

That means I have two or three more years before I find out if the cross pollination of my red and pink varieties will yield anything interesting.

The amaryllis seedlings on the left are about a year old. The seedlings on the right are newly transplanted after sprouting in water. Photo by Barb Gorges.

Where to buy

If you don’t have any amaryllis yet, it isn’t too late to find them at stores and in catalogs. If you plant a bulb in January, it will bloom at its natural blooming time in early spring.

You may find bulbs marked down at our local garden centers and grocery stores now. Catalogs like Jackson and Perkins or Breck’s offer more variety. And then there’s the Amaryllis Man’s website, http://stores.ebay.com/amaryllisman. If you don’t need your amaryllis in variations of Christmas red and white, he offers some that are orange.

Hmm.

I might have room on my windowsill for one of those if I find another home for my rubber tree….

Update, March 1, 2018:

Typically, my amaryllis bloom in February or March. This year they started blooming in mid-January. Only one decided to hold out until the end of February. Just before the petals of one of the early bloomers started to wilt, I touched the anthers to the pistil and now the seed pods are swelling.

Bulb forcing brings spring indoors mid-winter

This classic bulb-forcing vase holds a hyacinth bulb. Photo by Barb Gorges.

Published Oct. 15, 2017, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, “An indoor spring…during the winter.”

By Barb Gorges

It’s the season for buying spring-blooming bulbs. But not all of them need to go in the garden—at least not right away. Some of them can be kept back for forcing.

Bulb forcing allows you to enjoy crocus, the small iris, hyacinth, daffodils and even tulips indoors earlier than they bloom outside. Think of them as a deep winter gift to yourself, or for someone else.

Cheyenne Botanic Gardens director Shane Smith recently gave me background on the practice and a few tips.

The science and history

Smith said the trick is to use bulbs from temperate climates that need winter—such as the bulbs we plant in our gardens for spring bloom. They can get by with a shorter winter, or artificial cooling period, to bloom. Bulb growers in Europe started taking advantage of this about 300 years ago, as relayed by Patricia Coccoris of Holland in her book, “The Curious History of the Bulb Vase.”

The timing

Buy spring-blooming bulbs now. Bulbs ordered from catalogs begin shipping here around the beginning of October because bulbs normally need to be planted outdoors when the soil cools, but before it freezes in December.

For bulb forcing, figure 12 weeks minimum of “cool treatment,” however tulips need 13 weeks or more. Once the minimum is met, you can stagger when you start warming up the bulbs. You can aim for specific bloom times during our cabin fever months, January through March, or maybe even later into spring when we get those depressingly late, tulip-breaking snow storms.

The best bulbs

Smith said he used to tell people to buy the premium-sized bulbs for forcing, but now he thinks he gets more bloom for his buck with the smaller grades of bulbs. Premium hyacinth bulbs go for more than a dollar apiece in the John Scheepers catalog, but you might find smaller bargain bulbs and have more, if only medium-sized blooms, for the same amount.

Smith said some varieties of bulbs are easier to force and bulb catalogs often will mention which ones. Varieties seem to go in and out of vogue so don’t be surprised if Smith’s are hard to find.

Hyacinth is the classic forcing bulb, growing 10-12 inches tall. Each stalk is covered in tiny florets. Smith looks for Pink Pearl, Queen of the Pinks, White Pearl, L’Innocence (white), Blue Jacket, Delft Blue and Blue Giant.

Crocus-sized bulb-forcing vases are harder to find. Photo by Barb Gorges.

All varieties of crocus force well. Smith’s favorite varieties are Remembrance (purple), Blue Ribbon, Giant Yellow and Jeanne d’Arc (white). Only 4-5 inches tall, they are usually planted as a mass.

Iris reticulata, though related to the summer-blooming bearded iris, grows only 4-6 inches high. Recommended for rock gardens, mine bloomed outside at the end of last February, but it would be nice not to have to brave winter winds to enjoy it. Smith said all the varieties force well. Scheepers lists eight ranging in color from white to blue to deep purple, all marked with a bit of yellow.

Almost any daffodil (narcissus) will work well for forcing, said Smith. The popular Paperwhite narcissus, however, is a tropical bulb, so it doesn’t need cooling.

Tulips, said Smith, are the hardest to force. They need the longest cooling time, minimum 13 weeks. They also may get floppy and need staking. Look for the earliest varieties, those that would otherwise bloom outdoors here (winter-hardiness zone 5) in April.

There are a variety of other, more difficult spring-blooming bulbs to experiment with: snowdrops, grape hyacinth (muscari) and squill (scilla).

Bulb-forcing vases

Bulb-forcing vases are not easy to find this fall. Your best bet is Amazon or eBay. These vases, usually glass, are pinched near the top, providing a cup for the bulb to sit suspended so that only its base touches the water. You watch as the roots grow to fill the rest of the vase and the flower stem sprouts. For this forcing method, you can cool just the bulbs in your refrigerator for the recommended time. Be sure hyacinth bulbs don’t touch produce.

If you are lucky enough to find a bulb forcing vase, remember to change the water regularly.

These hyacinth bulbs have been potted up and will be set in a 2-foot deep trench in the vegetable garden and mulched with straw or pine needles for their 12-week “cool treatment.”  Small bulbs, like crocus, need a half inch of soil covering them. Photo by Barb Gorges.

Potted bulbs

Smith pots his bulbs. Without a cellar between 35 and 45 degrees, he instead buries the pots in a 2-foot-deep trench in his vegetable garden. He then backfills the trench with straw or pine needles. The mulch allows moisture to percolate down, whether the bulbs are watered by hand or by snow, and allows in air.

Pots can be plastic or clay. However, if you have a fancy one, you may want to use it as a cache pot in which you insert the utilitarian pot that was buried.

Put only one type of bulb in a pot because different types sprout at different rates.

The depth of the pot should allow 2 inches or more of potting soil under the bulb with the bulb tip just a little below the rim of the pot.

Smith said regular packaged potting soil will do. Potting soil can be very dry, so mix it with water in an old dishpan or bucket before spooning it into the pot as the layer that will be under the bulbs. Then set the bulbs on top, right side up. The root end can have bits of root left and the shoot end is usually pointier.

You can pack the bulbs in, nearly shoulder to shoulder, leaving just a little space between them. Then fill in with more potting soil. Smith said the top third of the bulb can be left exposed, but crocus and iris bulbs need to be covered a half inch deep.

Label the pot so you remember what’s in it—especially if you do more than one kind. Mark where you bury the pot. And mark your calendar for when to bring the pot in.

Chill out

While the potted bulbs are chilling in the dark, make sure the soil doesn’t dry out. You may need to lift the mulch and water once a month if it’s a dry winter.

Coming in from the cold

When you bring a pot in, Smith recommends putting it in a dim room at 60 degrees or cooler until the shoots are a few inches tall. Then move it to a bright window and 65 degrees. “Buried to blooming” may take two weeks. Turn pots every day to keep plants growing straight.

Flowers can last a week or two. Once in bloom, you can prolong it by setting the pot farther from the window and keeping the room’s temperature at 65 degrees.

Afterward

The advantage to planting forced bulbs in potting soil is that you can give them a second life. Cut back the spent flowers and keep watering until the leaves turn yellow. Plant the bulbs out in the garden when the soil thaws, where they might bloom again in two years.

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Update March 1, 2018:

The bulbs for the vases were left in the refrigerator for a couple of months to cool and taken out in early January.

Also in early January I brought in the pot of hyacinth and the pot of crocus that were buried in the vegetable garden and covered with a foot of leaf mulch.

The bulbs in vases didn’t do well. They couldn’t seem to grow enough roots. That hyacinth stalk of flowers was about 15 percent the size of the ones in the pot.

I felt sorry for the crocus bulbs in the tiny vases and soon planted them in dirt where they were much happier. That proves you could cool your bulbs in the fridge and then plant them in soil, without wintering them in the garden. But the pot of crocus that did spend two months buried did very well. Interestingly, the yellow crocus bloomed before any of the shades of purple.

I would force bulbs again. If I plant the hyacinth bulbs individually, they would be easier to share with friends, or I could stagger the dates I bring them indoors, prolonging the season of sweet-smelling flowers.

Iris reticulata bulbs were forced to bloom indoors one spring, then replanted outside in the garden in early summer where they bloomed the next spring. Photo by Barb Gorges.