Forcing Blooms

The concept of "forcing blooms" sounds funny. "You must bloom now!" It's all about hurrying spring along inside before it's ready to happen for real outside.

Last month, after all the snow had melted, I went outside and pruned a misshapen crabapple tree that we have in our backyard, and rather than just toss all of the trimmings, I brought some of them inside and tried to force their blooms to come a little bit early. Every few days, I snapped a picture and here's what the process looked like. (Wow. It looks just like it looks when it does it outside.)






It was a fun experiment, but not as easy as it sounds. The trick is all in the water.

When the branches are first cut, it's important to prepare them to absorb as much water as possible. I took the freshly cut branches out to our patio stones and with a hammer pounded the cut end to break open the base about three inches up the branch. Once they're in the container, from then on it's all about keeping the water fresh. Almost every day I dumped out the old water, rinsed off the branch ends, and replaced the old water with new. As soon as I'd get busy or just forget to do that, the buds would wilt. Like I said, it was a fun experiment, but next year I think I'll make it easier on myself and be patient and wait for the real thing outside.