Bringing flowers indoors can certainly brighten up any home when the cold winter season sets in. In today’s busy world it can be difficult to know what you can do for color indoors.
Clumps of iris pumila or violets, potted now and brought into the house, should bloom in a few weeks.
Branches with plump uninjured flowering buds of winter honeysuckle, forsythia, peach, pussy willow, Cornelian-cherry, Magnolia stellata and Soulangeana, deutzia, Spirea Thunbergi and flowering quince may be cut and placed in water for winter bouquets.
Cut the ends of branches on a slant and peel back the bark an inch or so to allow increased water absorption. Select branches preferably two to three feet long. Specimens brought inside immediately after cutting and placed in water in a sunny south window usually develop rapidly and
No great difference is shown when branches are forced in either warm or cold water. Room temperatures from 55 to 65 degrees produce best results, but this range is considerably less than that in the typical home. Higher temperatures force bloom sooner than where lower temperature is maintained, but the flowers do not last as long. Sunlight is not essential but it does impart a richer color to the flowers and foliage. Length of time required for forcing depends upon the nearness of the normal blooming season; the first branches cut in late January take more time to develop than those cut the first of Mareh.
For attractive outdoor flower boxes during the winter, cut tip end branches 12 to 18 inches long of spruce, fir or pine and stick down into the soil in flower boxes. A few small Tine cones wired naturally to the branches will add interest and attractiveness. Later a few branches of forsythia and winter honeysuckle with vigorous flowering buds cut and stuck down into the soil among the evergreen branches will add early color.