Forcing flowers for spring

This year’s icelandic poppies

My goal for 2023 is to have flowers for cutting as early in the year as possible. If I could achieve this I feel I’d really be getting value from the greenhouse. Icelandic poppies and butterfly ranunculus flower earlier under cover, so I’m making a concerted effort to get them going over winter so they’re ready to cut in early spring. I’m also planting tulips and anemone coronarias and hoping to force them into flower a bit earlier in the greenhouse than the ones outside. Hopefully I’ll have lots of stems of beautiful flowers at a time when they’re hard - or expensive - to come by.

Last year I grew loads of daffs and tulips in my raised beds which were ostensibly for cutting. But when it came to it I couldn’t bring myself to chop them because the display looked so good in the garden. So the greenhouse crop are going into big ugly plastic pots to remind myself that they are just that - a crop for cutting, not for display.

What will be for display are my indoor narcissi which I’m also going to keep in the greenhouse, until they’re in full bloom, at which point I’ll bring them into the house. This is because I’m impatient and got tired of watching them go through all the first stages of growth last year, and even more annoyingly, by the time they did flower they’d attracted loads of gnats. In the greenhouse they’ll do their thing out of sight. It’ll take a bit longer because the greenhouse is colder than the house, but hopefully they won’t get as leggy in the process. And as they come into flower the greenhouse will smell like heaven.