Topic: Indoor bulbs

[aquilegia]

I bought some indoor hyacinth (how do you spell it? that doesn't look right) bulbs. Instructions say to leave them in the dark after planting - does that literally mean dark such as in a cupboard, or just a shady room?

And I put a few crocus bulbs into pots for indoors. The bulbs were already sprouting. Will these work if I just bung them on the windowledge? Or do I need to chill them first?

[rosebud]

Hi Aqui about your hycinths? if you put them in a dark cupboard or as i do mine in a cardboard box untill they show at LEAST half an inch of top growth then bring them out,  keep them moist but not wet they should be fine. they smell wonderful when you walk into a room.  Good luck hope this helps. I cant help on the crocus never tried them.

[Palustris]

Crocus need to be kept in the same sort of conditions as they experience if planted out in the garden. Put the pots outside in a sheltered place where they will not get actually frozen or waterlogged. Bring them in to the house to enjoy the flowers when the buds begin to show colour. They do need a period of cold the initiate flower development.

[aquilegia]

OK. THanks both.

I'll put the crocuses back outside, with anti-squirrel defenses (they eat all my bulbs the little...)

[Palustris]

Mice luuuuurve crocus bulbs!

[aquilegia]

Oh - is it the mice? I just always assumed it was the tree rats. Sorry Squirrels.

Can mice climb stairs? Something has attacked the bulbs in my porch before (about 10 steps up).

[Doris_Pinks]

Didn't you know Aqui they come with grappling hooks! And I think cast iron stomachs as they managed to chew through the kids very expensive, was going to last em till they went to college, paddling pool last winter! Lucky they look so cute! ;D

[Palustris]

If mice can get up to your roof space and live amongst the insulation, dining happily on the electric cable then a few steps to your porch are not going to stop thm.

[john_miller]

I would like to correct something Eric posted so that, hopefully, anyone growing bulbs indoors will have many successes . The buds on temperate bulbs are set during the period following flowering but before the bulb becomes dormant (not, as Eric stated, during vernalisation). The cold period that the bulbs require prior to flowering sets the length of the pedicel (the flower stalk). Different species, and even different cultivars within the same genus, require different vernalisation periods to get the desired/typical pedical length (and will break dormancy at different times, dependent upon how many cold units are required to do this). A replication of a classic (and easy to do at home) experiment with tulips that my college did annually for us poor bumbling students involved vernalisation of 4/8/12/16 weeks (of the same cultivar) with, in my year at least, tulips. At 4 weeks the bulb flowered with a pedicel 5cm long, at 16 the pedicel was so long it needed support (12 weeks was the optimum time). The flowers were normal sized so the 4 week one looked grotesque and the 8 not quite so.

[Palustris]

I was just trying to make it simple. Somewhere in the library I have a set of charts which give (approximately) the times required by various bulbs at various temperatures etc. to initiate flowering and control stem length.
The advice I gave for crocus growing is the way we have always gone about it,with success. It avoids the problem of the things flowering inside the corm, which I have had happen too.
Crocus grow from corms, not bulbs!