If you are feeling the February blues any where near as much as I am, you will appreciate this easy method for bringing early spring into your house! If you are sick of the cold, the frozen snow and hard packed winter earth and you want to bring a little color and beauty back into your winterized home, now is the time of year for forcing early blossoms indoors!
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Go out into the snowy landscape of your garden, or if you don’t have a garden, take a stroll around your neighborhood. Bring a pair of scissors or garden clippers with you on your walk. You’ll need them to cut off branches and stems.
As you walk, keep your eyes open for any bushes, hedges or shrubs that have early buds on them. Forsythia is a favorite for early forcing. The dormant bushes are fairly easy to spot, covered in buds with long whip like branches. Try to remember where the flashiest spring blossoms happened last year. Remember those beautiful pink cherry blossoms? Go snip a few branches from that dormant cherry tree, Tulip tree, or Magnolia and you will soon have those pink flowers in your living room!
When you go to cut the branches, cut off stems that have plenty of unopened buds, and try to snip the branch close to the base of it’s juncture with the larger plant. Once you have snipped a small bunch of long stemmed branches, bring them back into your house for arranging.
Find a tall, wide necked vase that can accommodate all of your branches without squeezing or crowding them. Then fill your vase with water and add a few drops of liquid plant food. Bring the branches over to your sink and cut the ends again under running water to rejuvenate them and give them a longer life.
Next arrange the stems in your vase and leave it somewhere where it will get light but won’t be so hot that the blossoms dry out. A table or counter top is best, some place where it won’t be bumped or disturbed by drafts and gusts of wind.
It will take about a week for the blossoms to open and the petals to unfurl into their full bloom. Watch for changes in the buds from day to day and you will be amazed at how quickly the cut stems react to the water and warmth, transforming from seemingly dead branches into a beautiful, showy, springtime arrangement of color and life!
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