Hi everybody this is Noelle at Petitti Garden Center in Oakwood village and
we're talking about forcing Paperwhite's Amaryllis and also
Hyacinth for the holidays when you start a test like this it's really good to
start around the beginning of November cuz many of these plants might take
around four to six weeks to eight weeks of time in order to produce their full
blooms so you can enjoy them for the holiday season one of the easiest plants
to really force and start is going to be your Paperwhite so Paperwhites are in
the daffodil family of the narcissus family and they really are not a hearty
daffodil like you would think of that you would plant in the fall and they'd
come up in the spring they really are meant to be grown indoors and forced to
bloom indoors most of them are fragrant there are several different varieties
however most of them are white in color so you might have a doubled paperwhite
you might have a single type paperwhite some might be a little bit taller or
shorter just depending on the variety that you prefer what's great about paper
whites is that they can be grown in just gravel in this case I'm always I'm
always telling you all you want to make sure you have good drainage but when
you're forcing paper White's you do not need good drainage actually you want a
pot that doesn't have any drainage holes in it okay so it's filled with gravel
just a little bit of pea rock pebbles if you will just barely below the lip of
that pot and then literally you just take your paperwhite bulbs and you rest
them right on top of those pebbles then you go ahead and you fill with water
right to the bottom of the bulbs just so it's barely touching believe it or not
within a week or so you'll start to see roots moving down into the water and
you'll start to see those shoots up here so paperwhites really really easy
another easy one that you can force inside
this time is gonna be your hyacinth lots of times you'll see kits like this for
the holidays it's a really nice gift for a gardener where you're going to have a
forcing bulb vase so they kind of have this hourglass shape to them the reason
being is the bulb will fit just right on top right there
and so that hyacinth bulb is sitting real nicely and what you're gonna do is
you're gonna fill that vase with water the water again is just gonna go just to
the very bottom of this hyacinth so it's a very it's just barely barely touching
again you'll start to see the roots move down into the water and again that chute
that stem will start to develop and grow for you hyacinths can also be forced and
gravel so you can take your hyacinth bulbs just like this this is a nice
Valentine mixture beautiful reds and whites and Pink's there and you could do
the same thing you could put it in a small pot filled with pebbles just like
the paperwhites you go ahead and fill with water make sure it doesn't have any
drainage holes in it okay it wants to hold the water and then water comes
all the way up to the bottom of the hyacinth the last plant that we loved
during the holidays as far as the bulbs are concerned are the amaryllis bulbs
and there are a really big bulb if you've never seen them before
there they are massive there's such a large plant and so a lot of energy big
beautiful flowers and leaves come out of this bulb when you're choosing an
amaryllis bulb but you want to make sure that it's nice and firm and really with
any of your bulbs just make sure they're nice and firm to the touch they do have
the tunic that protective coating on the outside actually does protect the bulb
plants so that's good to have that on there with amaryllis bulbs what we're
looking for is they can also be forced in pebbles however it's a very very hard
to transition them into potting soil and to keep them year after year so if
you're just looking for a seasonal plant that you want to try once
you could definitely plant them in pebbles if you want to keep your
amaryllis year after year which we recommend then
go ahead and you're going to take a pot fill it just the bottom with a little
bit of pebbles again to increase the drainage okay and then you're gonna fill
with potting soil just about an inch away from the top lip of that pot and
then all we're gonna do is we're just gonna dig down and not too deep so the
whole idea is to plant the amaryllis about half into the soil so the roots
and the bottom half of the amaryllis bulb are in the soil and the top half
and the neck of the amaryllis are above the soil so we're just going to dig down
just enough to do that try to get all those roots sort of nestled down into
the soil centered in the pot just kind of tamp the soil around and then we'll
have our amaryllis planted then we'll go ahead and we'll water well thoroughly
moisten the soil put it in a nice bright area for all of these bulbs a nice
bright area it does not need direct sunlight just a bright room maybe a
little bit away from a bright sunny window like five foot away so it's
getting some indirect lighting on it and the cooler you can keep the bulbs the
longer that they are going to bloom for you to that so that's something to keep
in mind as well one other trick that I actually have for you is you can make
your paperweights a little bit shorter because sometimes they can grow very
very tall inside in the homes over the winter so you can actually when you
water them you can add an alcohol solution it's a five percent alcohol
solution so it would be one part rubbing alcohol to ten parts water and what this
does is it will actually shorten the foliage and the flowering stem so those
plants stay real upright and compact for you so that if that's something you want
to try I really highly suggest it it works really nicely on the paperwhites
so they don't flop over and become a mess you don't have to stake them up and
so forth but as far as indoor bulb forcing that's something that a great
thing to do inside at this time of year beginning of November enjoy