Back
in early April I read an article about forcing spring flowering bulbs indoors
accompanied by photos which made them look like the next trend in home
accessories. At work I sit next to a north facing window (think south if you’re
in the northern hemisphere) which seemed to me to be the perfect spot for such
a project. With visions of me stunning my work colleagues with masses of
flowering plants on the window sill I put in an order for some daffodil and
tulip bulbs. When they arrived a couple of weeks later I put them in the fridge
to chill for the allotted time frame – 8 weeks for the daffodils, and 12 for
the tulips.
I’ve
tried growing daffodils before with extremely limited success and only in the
first season. I’ve never bothered to attempt tulips - they are nothing but a
pipe dream with our warm winters. The successful bulbs that stay in the ground
year round in my garden are Dutch iris (still to come) and the lovely delicate
Snowflake (flowering now and strangely next to impossible to get a clear shot of).
Sometime,
while the bulbs were chilling, I rethought my original plan of growing them in
my office. There were a lot of bulbs for one thing. And even though I’d ordered
up some miniature daffodils for the purpose of filling a pot that had been
lying fallow next to my desk since the languishing plant in it had finally
turned its toes up a couple of years ago, the bulbs weren’t actually smaller than normal. I resigned myself to the fact that my
amazing home dec accessory was not going to happen.
Not
to worry, I planted three straggling fronds of Boston fern I dug up from the
garden into the planter on my desk and made fun of them before anyone else had
a chance to. Fingers crossed they will thrive and prove my credentials as a
gardener after all.
Traditional
wisdom has that spring flowering bulbs should be planted in May. I fretted that
the chill time would mean they would go in the ground too late to produce. I
needn’t have worried. They grew like topsy and five weeks later they were
flowering – superb!
In
my daily inspection of their progress I note that these may be only a portion
of the bulbs that were planted. There is actually another batch coming through
now, so these are the early season varieties, the miniatures and the
‘Harbingers of Spring’, with the Langley daffodil still to come. I have only
just planted the tulip bulbs but I note one has some growth poking up. Fingers
crossed… although I’m not very confident of them – they were looking a little
waxy by the time they were planted.
As
a note: I highly recommend the miniature daffodils. They are prolific flowerers
and would do really well as a part of your interior décor *wink*.
Happy
gardening
