Only 48 gardening days until Christmas so just enough time to ensure a full-bloom Yule
If you want to have a house filled with flowering bulbs this Christmas, then the window for planting them is closing rapidly.
It is already too late for hyacinths, which should have been started off by early October at the latest, and even if you pick the earliest-flowering hippeastrum that you can find, then it is unlikely that you’ll see flowers before New Year.
However there’s still time to plant Paperwhite narcissi if you act quickly, setting the bulbs into compost with their tips uncovered, placing them somewhere at 10° Cor under until the shoots reach 5cm, and then bringing them into the warmth.
If you want to grow the bulbs in a decorative bowl or glass without drainage holes, then use gravel in place of compost, and keep the water level just below the base of the bulbs. If the flowers grow too rapidly in gravel then you can snip them off at the base and display them in a vase instead but if you are using compost then try placing decorative twigs around the pot to act as a support for the stems as they grow.
Feed the bulbs regularly and keep watering until the stems die down and you can then store them until next year. There are all kinds of beautiful pot plants available at this time of year that you can display on their own or use to add new life to collections of houseplants, including indoor chrysanthemums which should flower for four or five weeks.
Chrysanthemums come in lots of lovely autumnal colours and they are not difficult to grow, so long as you water them regularly. However you must water them from below as the leaves have a tendency to succumb to fungal infections if they get wet.
Getting chrysanthemums to flower a second time is tricky as it involves keeping the plant in darkness for a prolonged period and maintaining it at very cool conditions, so for that reason they are mostly treated like cut flowers and discarded once the petals fall.
However if you don’t want to throw yours away then keeping it fed and watered regularly will maintain it in good condition.
Like all houseplants, chrysanthemums need to be placed away from drafts and in a bright position, although a windowsill may be too chilly for them overnight. And avoid placing them next to radiators where they will overheat and dry out too quickly.