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Paperwhites love a little drink of Gin

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Now here’s a few tips that you might not have heard of or thought of before:

If your forced paperwhite Narcissus, are flopping over there is a remedy – an odd one at that. Researchers at Cornell discovered an old home remedy for top heavy paperwhites that will help keep them in place – give them a good stiff drink. That’s right, put a little bit of gin in the water and watch their heavy heads lift. You can use an assortment of alcohols for these boozy plants – vodka, rum, tequila and whisky all seem to work equally well.

Another tip to steady your paperwhites as they grow is to start them in plain water until the roots begin to show and the stems are a couple of inches in length. Once they reach this stage, drain the water and use an alcohol/water mix by mixing one part liquor to seven parts water. Continue to water them with this 5% alcohol mixture and they should stay upright and happy. Use the alcohols mentioned above for best results. This mix stunts the growth of the stems by a third to one half but doesn’t affect the size or production of the blooms.

You should also keep your paperwhites in a bright, yet cool room as they will grow at a slower rate in the cool room. The prefered room temperature would be closer to 60 degrees than 70 degree’s F. You can also place the bulbs in a container of pebbles, water or soil rather than growing the bulbs in a water filled container. Maintain the waterline below the bulb level or they may rot. Water the roots, not the bulb. This holds true for Amaryllis and hyacinths as well.

Also, apparently bulbs started after the new year will grow more quickly and and be shorter plants than bulbs started in December.






Choosing your Amaryllis bulbs

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Choose your Amaryllis bulbs carefully. You will find that bulbs that have started to grow while in the store displays are often stressed, and in that first year the flowers will be smaller- if they produce any at all.

You want to pick bulbs that either don’t have, or whose bud tip is barely showing. Make sure that the bulb still feels firm when you touch it as well. I’ve often found bulbs rotting in the store shelves because they’ve been kept in a too warm area.

Many of the bulb kits contain a bag of peat moss, a cheap plastic pot and a small bulb. You might do better trying to find larger bulbs as they often grow and have two stalks instead of one. It’s far better to perhaps purchase loose quality bulbs of a good size and plant them yourself in a good soil mix. I’m sure you’ll appreciate the results.

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