Garden Centre

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Hyacinths – indoor and out

If you were given hyacinths for Christmas, or forced your own in time for the day, they will be fading now. But if you have been to a garden centre recently, you’ll have found that they are full of pots of strong green shoots that will soon become the powerfully scented flowers named after the Greek youth of surpassing beauty (don’t ask for details, it’s not an edifying story!)

You can grow them yourself for Christmas flowering by purchasing special bulbs marked with the label ‘processed for winter blooming’ or just ‘processed’. They look best if you pick an odd number of bulbs, one, three or five, of the same colour and plant them to half their depth in a pot filled with moist bulb fibre. Then put the pots in a dark and cool place for around ten weeks.

When the shoots are about two inches, add more bulb fibre if needed and put the pot in a light place to bring them into flower. Easy!

And once they’ve flowered, let them die down naturally in the pot and then plant them outdoors for the following year – they won’t appear nearly so early but should continue to flower and be lovely for years to come. The like an open soil in the sun, and you need to put them in the ground in early autumn so they can get their roots down before the soil freezes. They need to go quite deep, around six to eight inches.

Labels: forcing bulbs, hyacinths, winter flowers

The All Seasons Gardener at 9:14 AM

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