Bulbs help usher light into winter

Here’s an idea: Fast forward with me about three to four months from now, to, say about mid January to February. Instead of the warm, golden light and colors of fall, we’ll probably be staring at a white landscape locked in a deep freeze with little if any sign of life. We will likely have been looking at this same stark scene for a number of weeks. It may even be driving a lucky few batty enough to ditch the parka for sunscreen on Maui.

The rest of us do have options. We can create an early spring by forcing a few pots of fragrant and colorful daffodils, grape hyacinth or crocus to chase winter away.

Stephanie O’Byren, head of the greenhouses at the Gaiser Conservatory at Manito Park knows all about tweaking bulbs into blooming early. She and her greenhouse crew force more than 4,000 bulbs each year to brighten up the conservatory from late January through to the end of February.

O’Byren usually plants a mixed variety of daffodils, tulips, hyacinths, muscari (small grape hyacinths) and maybe a few others. “Every year we try a few new varieties and we have our old favorites that perform over and over,” she says.

The size of pot you use depends on the type of bulb you are going to plant. Wide-bottomed pots are probably better than tall narrow ones because tall bulbs are heavy when in bloom and tend to tip over more easily. Wide pots also allow you to put more bulbs in for a bigger show. The pots must have drain holes.

Fill the pot with a layer of ordinary potting mix that will put the tips of the bulbs at the soil surface. Leave some room at the top of the pot for watering. Arrange the bulbs so they just touch each other. Cover with more potting mix and water well.

After the bulbs are potted, they go into a greenhouse with temperatures running 55 during the day and 40 at night to grow roots. At home, this can be done in a very cool basement room, a protected area of a garage that does not freeze or outdoors. Access to light is not really important at this stage.

If you choose to try them outdoors, a cold frame placed in a protected spot is probably your best bet given our cold winters. Put down a thick bed of pine needles, leaves or some other nonporous material in the bottom of the frame. Set the pots in close together and fill the spaces between them with more needles or leaves. Leave the lid of the frame ajar for now.

Leave the pots alone until about Thanksgiving and then cover them. Indoors you can lay a black plastic bag over them. Outdoors, cover them completely with more needles or leaves and close the frame lid. To do more pots at one time, O’Byren has heard of people layering the pots with bubble wrap before covering them with needles.

By mid-January, the bulbs will have their required chilling time and root growth and be ready to bring in to brighten the house.

“We divide our spring bulbs into four groups so we have a continuous bloom for about six to eight weeks,” says O’Byren. She brings in one group at a time to a greenhouse with daytime temperatures of 55 to 65 degrees to trigger leaf growth. At home this can probably best be done in a sunny window indoors away from heat vents and registers. The bulbs will need as much light as possible for two to three weeks to grow stocky, strong stems. Keep the pots evenly moist but not soggy.

If finding bright light is a problem, try using some grow lights set closely above the pots.

“They grow fast so you have to adjust your light often,” says O’Byren.

When the flower buds appear, pull the pot back out of the bright light and put them in a cool place (55 degrees) where you can enjoy the color. In the right temperature the show should last about two weeks. If the stems are floppy, insert some bamboo barbeque skewers in the pot and tie up the stems with dark thread.

You can plant the bulbs in the garden once it warms up enough to work the ground.

“After they come out of the displays, we take them to our coldest greenhouse that is about 50 degrees at night and keep them on the dry side,” says O’Byren. Trim off dead flowers but leave the leaves intact. When the weather warms, Manito’s bulbs go back out in the park system. “The way we see it is, it’s all a bonus what comes back. It doesn’t hurt to try.”

Want to enjoy the Gaiser Conservatory show? The end of January and all of February is the best time to see the display. The conservatory will be open 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. every day except major holidays.