Refrigerate Your Bulbs Now to Increase Blooms in the Spring

August 1, 2012 · Filed under DIY Tips, My Garden · Tagged caring for bulbs, fall planting, increasing bulb blooms, keeping bulbs healthy, planting bulbs, storing bulbs in fridge, storing bulbs in summer, tricks for bulbs

This was called “Holland’s Most Beautiful Flower Garden”

If you are like most gardeners, you plants your bulbs as part of your fall planting and then pretty much forget about them throughout the winter months.  Then on that first beautiful spring day you suddenly remember those bulbs and anxiously wait to see them appear.

If the conditions have been right over the winter  (cold for long periods of time) then your bulbs will likely come up beautifully.  If you have even been disappointed by your bulbs performance and thought “I wonder what I did wrong”, then the answer may not have been something that you did.  Bulbs need a good LONG chill for optimal growth.  A mild winter could leave your bulbs coming up short and you feeling disappointed by the first arrival in your garden.

There is a quick and easy trick that you can do now to help ensure that your bulbs will be beautiful in the spring.  Buy your bulbs now (in July) and store them in the veggie drawer of your refrigerator until you are ready to plant them.  You want to place them in the fridge at least 6-8 weeks before you plan to plant them in  the fall.  When you do this you are adding an additional 6-8 weeks of chill time for your bulbs and they will surely thank you for it with big beautiful blooms.