Once again, Aldi has saved my day by selling forced hyacinth bulbs right by the checkout lanes. Whew. That was a close call.
You see, what happened was that in the fall I usually grab a bag of hyacinth bulbs from a display rack in the local big box store once they’ve been marked down a bit. Then I toss them in the back of the refrigerator and let them cool for about 10 weeks until the first week of January.
At that point, I take them out, plop them on the hyacinth vases filled with water and wait for the magic. First, a few roots form, then the green tip starts to emerge, and finally, before I can say “It’s Groundhog Day already again,” they are blooming.
But this past fall I was not in the big box stores as often as I used to be, and I think people bought up all the flower bulbs so there were never any leftover bulbs to be marked down. I never found any hyacinth bulbs to buy.
Aldi to the rescue. Every year, they sell forced hyacinths just ready to bloom. The bulbs actually come on clear heavy, hyacinth vases but I chose to pull them out of those and put them in some other vases I had. I put up a video on YouTube to show how I did that in well less than three minutes, It’s one of the daily videos I do about gardening, all three minutes or less.
It was Dee Nash who gave me the idea to pull the bulbs from the vases they came in and put them on the nicer vases. I think we talked about it on this past week’s episode of The Gardenangelists. Or maybe it was the week before that?
Anyway, “hyacinths on vases” and the winter season of gardening continues.
I just bought 2 of these and they were beautiful. They are starting to wither now and I don’t know the 1st thing about how to preserve these for future blooming. Can you talk me through what to do? We’re in Wi if that matters.
Stephanie, Most gardeners who force hyacinths to bloom on vases toss them on the compost pile when they are done blooming. There isn’t really a good way to keep them going until the ground thaws enough for planting. And even if you did manage to keep them alive, they probably wouldn’t take off in the ground after growing in water like that. So treat them like a lovely flower bouquet… enjoy them, then compost them, and try some more next year!