Flower lovers can shop at local grocery stores, home centers and greenhouses for tulips and other bulbs already potted and growing. Frans Roozen, technical director of the International Flower Bulb Center in Hillegom, the Netherlands, offers these tips for enjoying an early spring indoors with potted flower bulbs such as tulips, daffodils, crocus and hyacinths. Buy potted tulips in a young stage with buds formed but not even fully emerged. Watching them grow and mature provides weeks of enjoyment. The flowers are just the grand finale.
Bulbs look especially attractive if repotted or double-potted in attractive containers.
Repot in one of your own favorite containers. The container must have a drainage hole and saucer to collect draining water. Water to keep soil moist but not soggy. However, people can get a breath of springtime indoors by enjoying forced, pre-chilled bulbs ready to break through their outer shells or by taking advantage of potted bulbs already growing. A selection of bulbs still is available at a few greenhouses and garden departments for planting outdoors or forcing indoors even though the peak of the bulb-buying season was before Christmas.