This spring I decided to plant a LOT of flowers. With all of this warm weather, I've had plenty of opportunity to do just that. I mean, who doesn't like flowers? You get to watch the sprouts grow up and blossom into bright, beautiful, colorful flowers. Flowers are just so much fun! A while back I got some bulbs; I'm pretty sure it was right before Christmas. I put them in the fridge for eight weeks. This is supposed to be a substitute for when the ground freezes, because in Louisiana there are only a few winters where the ground actually freezes. I'm not kidding. Last Christmas it was about 80 degrees. Warm weather has it's good sides though such as being able to plant flower seeds sooner. It's pretty awesome. Back to the bulbs now. I had planted all of the bulbs I wanted to and still had leftovers. What was I supposed to do with the leftover ones? Well, I saw this cool picture where someone had taken a bulb and put it in a jar with water and marbles. Sounds easy right? Well guess what? It really is. I'm going to show you how I did mine and also share some tips. All you need are these five things...
- Flower bulbs - I found mine at Lowe's a few months ago. I recently saw some bulb packs at Sam's.
- Mason Jars
- Glass marbles- You can get a bag of these at Dollar Tree.
- A window with tons of sunlight.
- Water, of course. :)
Okay! Lets get started. Grab everything listed above and find somewhere to do this project. First, you need to decide how many jars you want to do. You could do seven or twelve or twenty jars. Just do however many you want. Hey, you could even fill all of the windows of your house up with these things, except you'd need sunlight in every window. Keep in mind as you start these some might not work. If you are planning for a certain number you may need to plant a few extra.
Start with the marbles. Fill the jar 1/3 or 1/2 full with marbles. The flash on my camera made the marbles glow. It was kind of cool.
Next choose one bulb and put it on top of the marbles. To support the bulb you can also put a couple marbles beside it.
Now pour water in the jar until it just touches the bottom of the roots. It is very important that you don't cover the bulb in water. I did that with one of mine and it um, rotted. Lol!
Finally put all of your lovely jars in a window and watch them grow.
Every few days you will need to change the water in the jars and also wash the roots off. This will keep the bulbs from rotting.
After a couple weeks your bulbs will begin to sprout! This is what mine looked like after almost two weeks.
This is what they looked like after four weeks. They were almost twice as tall.
Do you see that little one in the right corner? It doesn't want to sprout. I don't think it ever wants to sprout. I'm still keeping it in the window though just in case it decides to sprout. All of the others are doing good. Once the flowers begin to bloom I will post a update for all of you. Until then I hope you try growing bulbs for yourself!
