IT’S PRACTICALLY December, but like many gardeners I’m already thinking about spring. One big element of that thinking is how to maximize the power of flower bulbs, and though you might have already planted some in the ground earlier this fall, there are still opportunities to call more bulbs into play.
It’s not too late to force pots of bulbs that can add extra color to your outdoor spring displays, for instance, or prepare others to provide indoor cheer while we wait. You just need to know a few strategic tactics.
Bulbs are one important element in Peggy Anne Montgomery’s garden that she shares with her husband Dan Benarcik in Wilmington, Del., a popular destination on Garden Conservancy Open Days tours and one of the exceptional private gardens featured in the book “American Roots.” Peggy Anne is a professional horticulturist and part of the team at Garden Media Group, where she represents Dutch Royal Anthos, a trade organization for Dutch bulb growers and exporters in the U.S. and Canada.
Read along as you listen to the Nov. 25, 2024 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify (and browse my archive of podcasts here).
forcing bulbs indoors and out, with peggy anne montgomery
Margaret Roach: Bulbs have been part of your life for a long time, Penny Anne. You even lived in the Netherlands, didn’t you?
Peggy Anne Montgomery: I did. I lived in the Netherlands for about 15 years, and of course that’s the bulb capital of the world, but even when I was a little child growing up in Minnesota, my mother grew tulips, so I’ve really had bulbs around me my whole life,
Margaret: And they’re such an important, I mean to me, they’re such a symbol of spring, you know what I mean? They’re just synonymous almost. Right. We’ve come to know them as synonymous with spring.
So there’s so many things I want to ask you about, from the best year-round care for Amaryllis to how to force pots of bulbs to use outdoors in springtime. So maybe let’s start there, with sort of the forcing for outdoor use, because I think that’s something that a lot of people think is even more complicated than it needs to be. And I have friends who do it in fairly simple ways, taking some of their extra tulips when they plant tulip bulbs in the fall outside and putting them in big pots and putting them in their garage in the winter and it works [laughter].
Peggy Anne: Yeah, it really does, and it’s not that difficult. I think one thing that’s kind of important to remember is when you’re going to leave a pot outside for the winter, whatever you’re growing should be two zones hardier than yours. For instance, I’m in Zone 7, so if I was going to pot up bulbs for outdoors, I would want to plant things that were hardy in Zone 5.
You just want to make sure it’s a little hardier, and you have to think about your pot, too, because terracotta can certainly crack in freezing conditions. But other than that, it’s a great way to work. And there’s this really fun thing called lasagna planting, where you plant bulbs in different layers in a big pot like your tulips at the bottom, and then narcissus and maybe grape hyacinths and crocus, so they bloom in succession for many, many weeks.
Margaret: In one big pot.
Peggy Anne: Yes.
Margaret: And so in a way, what we’re doing if we try to do this, and it’s a kind of fun thing, we’re going to talk about, of course, where to get the bulbs and all that, how we can still get them now. But one of the fun things about it is that it’s like having this extra form of annuals, but for early spring. Not summer annuals, but we’re making our own sort of annual color for the earliest part of the season, right?
Peggy Anne: Yeah, that’s right. And you know what? Of course, I’m a diehard gardener, and to me, the first flowers of spring are really the most precious. We’ve been through the darker days of winter when it’s cold and we’re not in our garden and not outside as much, and it’s those first bulbs that start blooming that get me outside to start noticing the garden and see what’s going on. And it gives you that hope that spring’s coming.
Margaret: So there’s the whole issue of chill period. And so bulbs need a certain amount of chill, of winter chill, to get ready to set their buds, their flower buds, and then eventually bloom and so forth. So how do we simulate that? And there’s still time to simulate that if we want to force some pots, whether… I love that lasagna idea, by the way, because that’s a great one because boy, that’s going to be a lot more show from the one pot, as you say. So how does the chill period work, and what’s sort of the general rules of thumb and some easy ones to get started with?
Peggy Anne: So they are going to have to go through a cold period like they would where they came from in nature. And so there’s a number of ways you can do that. Most are going to take a chill period of about, oh, I don’t know, let’s say 12 weeks as a kind of a general rule.
So you can do a number of things if you’re able to, you can put them outside if it’s not too cold where you live, put them outside in a window well, or maybe just cover them with a little bit of chicken wire or something so the squirrels don’t dig them up. [Laughter.] Or put it in your garage. It’s a great use for that beer fridge you’ve got, or a cold basement, and they just want to be in a cool, dark place. You’re going to shoot for a temperature of around 40 degrees. We don’t want them to be freezing, but they need to be cold, and you’ll check on them every couple of weeks, maybe give them just a little bit of water, not too much; that will promote them rotting.
So just kind of keep an eye on them. And then when you kind of see the buds are starting to come up, or you can dig in there a little bit and see that they’re putting on a good roots. Then after that period is over, you can bring them in the house and you can, for instance, put them in a cool room and them get a little bit acclimated. And as they start growing, of course they’ll take more water, and in two to four weeks you will have a pot of something beautiful and bright in your home.
Margaret: So that would be some probably more of a minor bulb, like a smaller bulb on that scale, as opposed to what I was mentioning before. I have one friend who will have extra tulips from the ones he planted in the beds, and he’ll put them in big pots and shove it in his garage. And then at tulip time, or even maybe a little earlier sometimes, he’ll also have this sort of echo of his beds of tulips. He’ll have these big pots of the same ones or complementary ones, and it makes, he can position them just so, and make it sort of like to catch your eye and say, “Hey, we’re having a tulip moment.” And then you see beyond in the distance the bigger bed of them.
So you’re sort of talking about that if I were to bring it into the house, as opposed to take it out of the garage like his big tulip pots and bring it outdoors and start watering it in late winter. So what kind of little guys would be good for that sort of indoor use, like crocus or what?
Peggy Anne: Sure. I think the minor bulbs really work well because they aren’t so tall and so they won’t have a tendency to flop over. So I would use things like anemones, windflower; Chionodoxa, glory of the snow; crocus of course. Galanthus, snowdrops, or iris [above] are beautiful. Muscari and miniature daffodils work wonderfully. And I also like to use botanic tulips because they are also fairly small in stature.
Margaret: So the little species tulips, huh?
Peggy Anne: Yeah.
Margaret: Interesting. Now a friend of mine who does a lot of this, her husband is like a very waste, not want not frugal person. And he’s adamant that every bulb she forces—because she does a lot—has to be then unpotted and put in the garden somewhere. Now do you do that or do you just toss them in the compost heap or what’s your sort of aftercare thing with the little guys that you brought into the house? Do you have some that you keep and find a place for in the garden or-?
Peggy Anne: I do. We have a lot of bulbs, as you can imagine in our garden [laughter]; we’ve got two people with the same plant disease. So we have a lot of bulbs.
Margaret: We should say like Dan works at Chanticleer Garden, the wonderful public garden. And so you guys are a real pair of addicts. I’m surprised you have room for anything [laughter].
Peggy Anne: I know. It’s good. We think it’s good. We have the same disease, otherwise one of us would be very lonely because we’re always on the garden. But yet, you know what? If I have time, it’s easy as pie to just grab my little trowel and dig a small hole and pop them back into the ground and let the foliage die back and let them go. And that’s really easy.
It’s a little bit harder, I would say, with large tulips and daffodils, but it’s super simple for all of the minor bulbs, the small bulbs, to do that. The ones I give away, and I do give a lot of them away because I think it’s the best gift ever in March to give somebody something that’s going to bloom inside their house. I tell my girlfriends and stuff just to compost them, and I’ll give them some more next year.
Margaret: So in other words, not to get burdened by this and worry about it, but on the other hand, you can incorporate a lot of them into the garden, so that’s good.
Peggy Anne: It is. And I just want to say that bulbs are not that expensive, and it really is O.K. to use them as annuals. I think we always think of them as they’re perennial, but they really aren’t that expensive compared to any other plants or the hanging baskets you bought that you’re going to compost in the fall. So don’t let those kinds of constraints get you down. Gardening should just be fun.
Margaret: Yeah [laughter]. So generally speaking, you said around 12 weeks, some of them are probably like 10 weeks, some are like 12 weeks. This is the time from when I put them in the pot and put them in that cold place, preferably around 40 degrees, not near freezing and not too much warmer. And so then it’s the 10 or 12 weeks later that I bring them in. Just go over that schedule again with me just so I make sure I understand.
Peggy Anne: Yeah, you’re exactly right. So yeah, the counting starts when you put them up and you put them in your cold space, and then you mark on your calendar because if they’re in the basement or out in the garage, you might forget about them. You might want to make a little note, or I would forget about them anyway. And just to go check on them every couple of weeks, see if they need a teeny, tiny bit of water. Just keep an eye on them and then make a note in your calendar when you’ve kind of hit that 12-week mark to go look at them. And you should probably see that they’re starting to push through the soil already. You’ll see some growth, and that’s another indicator that they’re ready to come in.
Margaret: And then it’s still going to be a couple, few weeks until we get further and we get to the bloom. O.K.
So when I spoke to you recently—we had a phone chat not long ago—you mentioned something to me that I’ve never done, which is that even I’m too busy cleaning up still and I don’t get to it for another couple of weeks, there are pre-chilled bulbs is sort of like one of these little tricks to “cheat” a little bit, cheat in quotes a little bit. Tell me about those, because now you got me looking in the catalogs and now I see all the bulb catalogs, or a lot of them have what they call pre-chilled bulbs that they ship in December specifically that give you a leg up on this process.
Peggy Anne: I know, and it’s so smart. I am not above cheating [laughter]. We have busy jobs and a busy garden to take care of. And you know how it is in the fall. I mean, we’re busy putting things to bed and getting things in the greenhouse and the leaves and everything. So forcing bulbs is sometimes for me more aspirational. So I love it when I can cheat like this.
And so pre-chilled bulbs just are bulbs that the grower has already put into a cold-storage facility, and they have kept them in exactly the right temperature and exactly the right humidity for the period of cold that they need. And so they’re going to ship them to you and they are ready to put in the pot and start growing. So simple. It’s the greatest.
Margaret: So it cuts a lot of the pre-chill time. I put them in the pot, I mean, they probably don’t have roots already, so do I put them in the pot and water them in, keep them in the cold a little longer or just bring them right in the house? I mean, I guess they come with directions. I just have never done it; I’ve never tried it.
Peggy Anne: Yeah, I would put them, if you’ve got it like a cool place in the house, put them there for a week or so, them get going, let them get adjusted, and then they’ll start coming up. And there’s nothing wrong with cheating and it’s just such a fun way to do it. And it’s going to cut out about 12 weeks’ waiting.
And also, Margaret, what I hate is some people will try this and for whatever reasons their bulbs might get mold and then they think that they’ve done something wrong. And I don’t want people to have a bad experience. Stuff can go wrong.
Margaret: In that 12-week period. Right?
Peggy Anne: Yeah. And it’s not because you’re a bad person. It can happen. They’re living things.
Margaret: Well, and you might not have the right, it’s not like in each of our homes we have the exact right climate-controlled, humidity-controlled environment that would be ideal for this. Exactly. We’re not a professional nursery or something.
So right now I have to find an alternate place for a lot of my storage of my bulbs, my tender bulbs, things that I carry over year to year for spring planting for summer enjoyment, because I made my basement more weatherproof [laughter]. I have an old house and I have an old foundation of unmortared stone, and it was a little leaky. And so it was probably 15 degrees cooler down there than it is now that I did the “home improvements.” Well, I kind of shot myself in the foot a little bit as a bulb hoarder, because now I don’t have sort of a cold-storage facility anymore. My basement got a little drier and warmer, do you know what I mean? It’s like you’ve got to find the place in your life, in your world,
Peggy Anne: And not everybody has that space. And what if you live in an apartment? So I think first of all, there’s the gateway bulbs like Amaryllis and paperwhites and hyacinths that you can buy and they’re ready to go, and you can plant them right now and they’ll be in your living room and they’ll bloom. And they’re fantastic.
Pre-chilled bulbs are going to really help you out with that forcing. And another thing I do is in late winter when stuff starts poking up out of the ground, I sometimes just dig them up and put them in a pot and bring some in the house.
Margaret: Interesting. So you’re stealing from the garden, are you? Huh? You’re pilfering?
Peggy Anne: Yes, I do. I steal from me. And my mother-in-law was a florist; she loves flowers, and so I’m always bringing her little pots that she has in the nursing home, so she’s always got something flowering going on. And then in springtime, in early spring bulb, potted bulbs are widely available. So you can go to your garden center or home store and buy some and plant up a little planter of them that you can put outside or inside.
Margaret: So among the bulbs that I might try forcing in pots, are there some that you think are for those of us who are more beginner-ish? Are there ones that you think are a couple of the best ones that we should try, that you find the easiest, versus are there some that are a little more advanced-expertise, finicky?
Peggy Anne: I mean, it’s basically the same. A bulb should have everything in it that it needs to grow and flower. And so as long as if you can provide all of that right temperature and timing, and that’s difficult for some people to do, but if you can, they’re not particularly difficult. What things I think are the easiest probably are the miniature daffodils. They are unstoppable,
Margaret: They’re tough.
Peggy Anne: Yeah. Grape hyacinths, Muscari [above]. I love those. And they are tough.
Margaret: Oh, O.K. Good. So that’s great. So if I’m going to do a little last-minute shopping, or look in the garden center and see if there’s any leftovers; that’s two great tips.
Peggy Anne: Plant them together.
Margaret: And you just hinted about the indoor things, Amaryllis and paperwhites and so forth. Now, do you do those in soil? Do you do those in water? I’ve even read about doing them in alcohol or something [laughter]; I don’t even remember some wacky stuff. How do you do indoor bulbs and which ones do you kind of recommend?
Peggy Anne: Oh, always Amaryllis. Everybody gets Amaryllis from us for Christmas. That’s just a given. So I often just pot those up in soil in a pot. You pot them about.halfway deep, and half the bulb is above that. This year, actually for the first time, I’ve got some very pretty tall vases, and I filled the bottom up with stone, and so I’m going to do the Amaryllis in water. They’ll sit on top of the rocks in the vase. Fill that up with water, and-
Margaret: So their roots will go down into the wet stones, but the bulb won’t be sitting in water. It’s perched above the water itself.
Peggy Anne: Yep. It’s perched right above that. What happens is because they can be quite tall and have a lot of foliage, that being in the vase stops them from flopping over.
Margaret: Oh, interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever forced an Amaryllis in water. That’s interesting.
Peggy Anne: Yeah, it’s exactly the same concept as you would see when you grow hyacinth, and you can buy them in a hyacinth glass, where they sit in the top part and then the roots go down into the water.
And paperwhites, I also always do in water. Get a big dish and fill it with stones and you just set the bulbs on top and water the stones and they come up. And I think what you’re thinking about the alcohol is there’s a trick to making your bulbs, Amaryllis or paperwhites, not get as lanky and flop over. And that’s by feeding them some vodka.
Margaret: [Laughter.] I know. But that’s what would help us to flop over. It prevents the bulbs from flopping over. I see. It has an opposite effect on bulbs. I see.
Peggy Anne: It does. It’s so funny. So you just do it regularly the first couple of weeks and let them get started, and then you use a very weak solution of vodka. It’s like one part vodka, seven parts water, and use that to fill up their dish. And a study from Cornell said it gives the bulbs kind of a stress. It stresses them so that they don’t grow excessively. And I have done it just because I was so curious. I mean: My bulbs are drinking vodka? I had to try it. And I really do think that it helped keep them in check a little bit.
Margaret: Huh, interesting. Interesting. The Amaryllis bulbs lately that I’ve been seeing for sale, some of them, I mean they look more like bowling balls than Amaryllis bulbs of 10 or 20 years ago. Do you know what I mean? There’s some really big ones.
Peggy Anne: Really big. They’re growing a lot in Southeast Asia now. I think people have really kind of gotten the message that the bigger the bulb, the more they’re going to get. There could be two or three stems on some of those.
Margaret: Yes, I’ve seen that. I gave one to my sister for Christmas, I dunno, a year or two ago. And it was like when the thing got going, it was madness. It was so many stems of flowers. It was crazy.
Peggy Anne: And each stem has so many flowers.
Margaret: Yes.
Peggy Anne: And if any of you have kids or grandkids, Amaryllis and paperwhites are the funnest because they grow so fast that the kids can really see that from day to day, the difference. It’s really fun.
Margaret: One more thing I wanted to ask about Amaryllis: So I used to take mine outside in the summer, like a houseplant so to speak, put them out there with my houseplants. And then when it would get to be early fall, I would bring them in and just, I put them in the broom closet or whatever, no light and no water, to sort of let them or make them go to sleep. And I don’t know why I did it that way, and I don’t even remember the number of weeks I did it or whatever. And then I’d take them out later in the fall and start watering them again and hope for the best.
And sometimes the first year after I bought them, I mean when I bought them that year, they do great because they were primed at the bulb seller to perform with excellence. But maybe the year after that they might’ve not done so well and they’d eventually catch up with my system, kind of. But is there a right way to aftercare them? [Laughter.]
Peggy Anne: I think that what you’re doing is right, but again, it’s, that’s a lot of care to have something all summer. It’s usually in a smaller pot, so they have to be watered a lot more. The way you’re doing it is absolutely fine. Sometimes you’ll have success, sometimes you might not. And this is another thing, my girlfriends are always like, oh no, I have to take care of this all year. And it’s like, no, it’s O.K. I’m going to give you another one next Christmas. I always do, just let it go. O.K.
Margaret: So let it go. Alright. Is it really true what I always read in bulb catalogs and stuff that it’s O.K. to and garden books, it’s O.K. to, until the ground is frozen solid, I can still plant bulbs outdoors. Does Peggy Ann Montgomery agree with that? Can I still do that?
Peggy Anne: [Laughter.] You know what, that’s really funny because I’m kind of the one that plants things a little bit earlier. I want to make sure that they’re established and they get their roots down. But my husband plants bulbs all through December and I can’t say anything to him, because it always works.
Margaret: And again, it’s because if these are from the nursery, from a bulb provider, they’ve been conditioned. Like they’re ready to do their thing. So I imagine that’s part of the reason for success, even with a super-late planting. So I could, and I could use that lasagna technique also.
Peggy Anne: You can do that in the ground as well. And yeah, it’s amazing. I think Margaret, those of us that have done a lot of nursery work and things like that, too, we know that plants are tough, tougher than we give them credit for.
Margaret: Right, right. Well Peggy Anne Montgomery, I’m glad to talk to you about bulbs—just to be reminded, and for you to help me remind people, that it’s not too late so we can force those pots both for indoor and outdoor enjoyment.
So like I said, thanks for the reminder and I hope I’ll talk to you again soon, maybe about bulb lawns sometime we’ll talk, because I know there’s another of your passions [above]. So we’ll get onto that sometime too, O.K.?
Peggy Anne: And if folks are interested, we don’t sell anything at flowerbulb.eu, but we have a lot of inspiration and educational material.
Margaret: Oh great. Alright, thanks so much. I’ll talk to you soon. Thank you.
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MY WEEKLY public-radio show, rated a “top-5 garden podcast” by “The Guardian” newspaper in the UK, began its 15th year in March 2024. It’s produced at Robin Hood Radio, the smallest NPR station in the nation. Listen locally in the Hudson Valley (NY)-Berkshires (MA)-Litchfield Hills (CT) Mondays at 8:30 AM Eastern, rerun at 8:30 Saturdays. Or play the Nov. 25, 2024 show using the player near the top of this transcript. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes/Apple Podcasts or Spotify (and browse my archive of podcasts here).
