I can imagine that many people have no idea what I mean by that. Forcing is, as the name suggests, forcing a flower bulb to bloom; treating the flower bulb in such a way that it blooms earlier than its normal flowering time.

Sounds complicated, but if you understand the flower bulb a little, it is actually quite simple. What you have to do is fool the flower bulb. You are going to treat it with the temperature in such a way that the flower bulb thinks that winter is over in February or March.

The flower bulb has a kind of biological clock and thermometer that tells her when the winter is over and it is time to start blooming again. According to the flower bulb, this is after about four months of winter cold. This is the so-called rest period of the flower bulb.

And it really is a rest period. It is often thought that the flower bulbs are resting during the summer months, but that is far from the truth. In the summer, the bulb is extremely busy creating its leaves and flowers for the next growing season. The complete plant that you see in the garden in the spring is already in miniature form in the bulb at the end of the summer. Even a very small detail such as the pollen grains have already been created before the bulb goes into rest during the winter months.

After planting, the bulb knows that it has to spend about four months at a temperature of less than 10 degrees Celsius before it starts growing and flowering again. Of course, the temperature has to go up a bit by then to accelerate growth. But if, for example, the temperature goes up a lot in January, the flower bulb will not grow, really not. She looks at her bio clock and sees that the four months are not over yet and turns over nicely once more.

But, you can fool the bulb. If you make sure that the bulb is at a temperature below 10 degrees around mid-October and you add 4 months: mid-November 1 month past, mid-December 2 months, mid-January 3 months, and mid-February 4 months.

Now the flower bulb has had enough rest to start growing and flowering. If you put it in the warm living room now, the bulb thinks, hey, it looks like spring, I'm going to grow.

So if you store the flower bulbs around mid-October for a month in a cool place in the house, it is fine in the refrigerator, they can then be planted outside. Around mid-November the soil outside is also below 10 degrees and they can grow roots in the soil, planted in a pot of course, and rest further.

Use a pot with holes otherwise the bulbs can drown in heavy rain. Take the pot out of the ground 4 months later, in this case mid-February, and put it in a pot in the living room. After 3 or 4 weeks you will see the first flowers.

Really fun to try once.

Can this be done with all flower bulbs? Yes and no, one is more suitable for it than the other. But if you use those flower bulbs that I say on the website are suitable for the pot, the chance of success is greatest. Other flower bulbs are sometimes less easy to force or need a longer rest period or they grow much too long and too weak in the room, where the light intensity is not so high in the winter.

Good luck if you try it.

Kind regards,

Carlos van der Veek