Forcing amaryllis and muscari bulbs: An At Home journal (Week 1-2)

Muscari bulbs from Longfield Gardens about two weeks into my efforts to force them to bloom early inside. The are sitting in water on top of a bed of glass marbles.If you are a gardener, you might love a gift of an amaryllis bulb that can be grown inside over winter to eventually produce impressively large flowers.

Not me. Because I've worked on home-and-garden-related publications for years. People always think I'd enjoy that sort of gift. They're wrong.

I do not have a green thumb indoors. I can't remember ever being able to keep a houseplant alive. Always too busy and forgetting to water or watering too much.

I'd rather grow my flowers and vegetables outside when there's usually a little help from rain. 

But this year something changed. I became intrigued by a photograph of flowering amaryllis bulbs sitting on pebbles in a large vase with no soil involved. I also had seen thick green amaryllis stalks growing from  huge bulbs in pebble-filled vases at Wegmans.

So, when two boxes of bulbs arrived by mail from the Lakewood-based bulb company Longfield Gardens. I was inspired to get started right away using this technique. But I didn't.

I needed to call up the company and talk with co-owner Hans Langeveld, who grew up among Dutch bulb growers in Lisse.

Langeveld advised that I could use marbles in place of pebbles in any suitably large and heavy vase,  and that all I needed to do was: one, keep the bulb dry to avoid rot, two, keep the water clean and three, make sure the roots had enough to drink. Then I was ready.

There was something liberating about being able to try to grow flowers with supplies I already had on hand. Since I had once fantasized about running away from newspaper work to become a floral designer, I have nearly 100 vases in various shapes and sizes. I also have lots of marbles. So, with no soil-buying trip to the local nursery requred, I happily pulled everything together to get started. I began to think of the project as making arrangements of "Slow Flowers" in the truest sense. 

But I needed to call Hans Langeveld again. "What if the roots are growing sideways?" I asked him.  The roots I saw were roots from when the bulb was growing in the ground last season, he informed me. And they needed to stay on, he warned. New roots would grow and the old roots would straighten in their search for water, he assured me.

So, following his instructions, I put some marbles in the vase bottom and then held the bulb above them at the height I wanted the bulb to sit in the vase. I then filled in the vase with more marbles until the bulb could rest on them.

I did that with three amaryllis bulbs -- 'Magnum,' 'Splash' and 'Double King' -- in three types of vases. The goal is to record their progress at least once a week.

I also had some bulbs of  Muscari armeniacum (grape hyacinth) that I hadn't put in the ground, and I noticed they appeared to be sprouting in the bag. So, I decided to try the same treatment with several of them.  

Here's my planting journal:

Dec. 4 (AM):

1. Put amaryllis bulbs in a tall vase and short sturdy vase with marbles in one and acrylic “rocks” in the other.

2. Put marbles in a wide blue vase and set several Muscari aremniacum bulbs on top. Add water. Place them in the living room with the amaryllis. Forget about them.

Dec. 5 (PM):

Visit a friend for a long weekend and take along the 'Double King' amaryllis bulb in a standard florist's vase with no pebbles or marbles, only water (I saw this method online...). Also, give several muscari bulbs on top of marbles in the wide bowl of a thick-stemmed cocktail glass. Baby the bulbs all weekend. Watch them and add water almost daily so it is always just touching their rootless bottoms. On Tuesday (Dec. 9) check them before leaving and wonder if they are growing at all.

Dec. 18 (AM):

Time to change the water. It's looking dingy in a large vase with acrylic "rocks" that are supporting a huge amaryllis bulb growing in water. 

1. Gasp when I walk through my hallway to the kitchen and catch a glimpse of green stems appearing to grow inside the blue glass. Go into living room and check to discover the delightful scene (shown above). Nearly all have sprouted and one bulb has almost 2 inches of green growth with multiple stems. Uncoddled, spider-like roots have grown quickly and deeply to reach available water that had not been increased for nearly a week. Still, I add a little water and remove the bulbs that don't have green shoots.

2. Change the water on the amaryllis bulbs (one shown at right) which is looking a little yellow in both vases. Roots appear to be growing well. The cut tops show slight signs of movement.

Note: If you try this, avoid getting pieces of the bulb's papery cover in the water, that will require it to be changed more frequently.

Dec. 19 (PM):

Call my friend who can report no action in terms of top growth with any of the bulbs.