Greenhouse: A new shipment of tender cacti & succulents has arrived.

Cyclamen are great plants for brightening your home during the holidays. Cyclamen prefer a cool, dry and bright place. The pink, red, white or maroon flowers will continue for weeks.

Think how cold and snowy February can be. Think how nice it'd be having a pot of tulips blooming on the windowsill. Forcing bulbs is easy and now's the time to start.

Bulbs need a period of dark and cold to simulate being in the ground. Unheated garages or refrigerators work fine. After about three months, bulbs are ready to bloom.

Bulb Varieties 

Many of the bulbs we plant in our gardens work well forced. One bulb that's great is Daffodil 'Hawera' but others work too:

• tulips
• narcissus
• hyacinths
• crocus
• scillas
• chionodoxa
• iris

Planting

Ready to Take Home Amaryllis Bulbs and Potted Indoor Plants in our Garden Center

Use clean, decorative pots. Make a soil mixture from:

• three parts potting soil
• two parts peat moss
• one part sand

Don't bury the bulbs; expose their "noses." They like being close together, but for the larger ones don't plant more than 6 in one pot; for smaller bulbs cluster up to 15. Don't mix varieties in the same container, since their flowering times vary.

Water after planting; keep them moist, not dried out. Label containers with bulb names, date planted and mark your calendar for approximate date they can come out of the cold.

Give them the Cold Treatment
Cover the pots with foil to keep light out. Maintain temperatures between 35 and 48 degrees F for a minimum of 12–13 weeks. Don't allow bulbs to freeze. Remove when there's visible top growth. If unsure, wait a few days rather than bringing them out too early. First growth is very pale; it turns green upon being exposed to light.

Seeing the Light
For the first week or two, give bulbs indirect light and keep at 50 to 60 degrees. Keep soil moist. Once growth is four inches high, move pots to a sunnier location. Most bulbs start to bloom two to three weeks after coming out of storage. To prolong the flowers, move the pots to a cool location each night. Don't worry about feeding bulbs; they have enough stored food to flower one time.

Forcing bulbs is an inexpensive and delightful way to have indoor blooms before spring. On those cold, blustery March days you'll be glad for the color.