Decorating for Christmas – Post Game Report

 

What worked:

Starting the bulbs in the middle of October

What I’ll do different next year:

Take them out of the fridge on December 1, not December 8.

Plant more bulbs in the same pot – shoulder to shoulder, as it were.

It wasn’t perfect, and the narcissus bloomed a few days before New Years Day. They are so pretty, though, and they smell wonderful. And they didn’t flop over the moment they started blooming!

Dinner tonight:

We ate at Pasha in Norfolk. I had zucchini cheese puffs and shrimp casserole. K had the carnival salad.

 

Decorating for Christmas

I was in the garden shop the other day and spied paper white bulbs. Years ago, I potted these each fall and they bloomed by Christmas day. I love the smell and having flowers bloom at Christmas, so I’m doing it again.

Paper whites like to grow in a shallow dish, and don’t require a lot of soil. I bought five bulbs for about $5.00 and found a container that’s about 10″ in diameter. (I’m so precise, doncha know…) I also bought 5# of river rock to put on top and weight the bulbs down as they grow.

I put a layer of rock in the bottom of the pot to cover the small holes and help with drainage. Then I put about 1/2″ of soil on top of the rock.

Paper whites don’t need to be in a lot of dirt – they can grow in just water if you wanted to put them in a bulb vase. I put the bulbs on top of the soil then added more soil halfway up.

Then I piled on more river rock to the top of the bulbs until only the very tips poked out.

After watering it thoroughly, I put the container on a plate and put the entire thing in the coldest part of the fridge, next to the eggs.

I’ll leave them in the fridge until the first or second week of December then put them either in the dining room or the living room to grow and bloom.

Now, if anyone has any cool tips for keeping these flowers upright – they fall over under their own weight – I would love to hear about it.