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| Photo: Nancy Shepard |
To help celebrate spring, I usually search the grocery stores for live pussy willows. This year they were hard to find. Yet on an accidental trip to Trader Joe’s I bought some reddish brown twigs with buds with no label. White or pink blooms or something else?
After measuring the branch length for my vase, I cut the bottoms on an angle then slightly smashed the cut bottoms and stuck them in water. The angled cut and smashing helped the branches take up water. In three days I had dainty pink flowers. Maybe cherry? Or plum? They have lasted over a week and are now sprouting leaves.
You don’t have to necessarily search the stores for
branches. This time of year (February and March) is a great time to get pruning
done on many of our trees and shrubs. While it’s typically recommended we prune
spring-flowering trees and shrubs after they are done blooming to avoid
removing blooms, they can still be pruned this time of year. Those pruned
branches can be forced to bloom indoors.
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| Photo: Pexels: Liana Horodetska |
Plants such as forsythia, redbud, dogwoods, hawthorn, lilacs, pussy willows, and viburnums are good candidates for forcing. Fruit trees such as apples and peaches can also be forced into blooming indoors. These, and other trees and shrubs that produce flowers in the spring, produce their flower buds in the summer, and after they have had enough cold weather are ready to bloom.
When selecting branches to use, try to find branches that
have a lot of flower buds. Flower buds tend to be larger, round, and plumper
than leaf buds, which are often narrow and pointed. Younger branches also tend
to have more flower buds than older branches. Start by cutting branches 6 to 18
inches long (depending on how you wish to display them) while making sure you
are using proper pruning techniques. The best time to cut branches for forcing
is when temperatures are above freezing. Remember that any branches you
choose to remove will be affecting the plant's floral display come spring. It
may be a good idea to take your cuttings from the less viewed side or from
areas that have a lot of branches while still trying to maintain a good shape.
While there are so many different methods out there to achieve
blooms, it might be fun to try all of them to see which works best. Plunging
into boiling water first? Scraping bark off the stem bottom? Using floral
preservative?
Sources:
https://www.almanac.com/forcing-branches-bloom-indoors
https://www.purdue.edu/hla/sites/yardandgarden/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/10/HO-23.pdf
https://www.gwwyh.com/blog/from-dormant-to-delightful-how-to-force-branches-into-blooms