The ending. See the beginning in the article Forcing hyacinths. Preparing and planting bulbs
After a period of cold rooting, hyacinths are brought into the room for an attachment (greenhouse, warm loggia, bright room), watered and placed first on the floor or, using a thermostat, set the temperature to + 12 ° C. Cover the top with a black non-woven covering material. Ideally, it should not touch the shoots. In such conditions, the bulbs are kept for 2-3 days, until the sprouts stretch 3-4 cm. Then the temperature is gradually increased, first to + 15 ° C, then to + 18 + 20 ° C. Ideally, if the heating is equipped with a thermoregulation system, then the temperature regime can be observed with great accuracy.
P.N. Steinberg wrote in his “Everyday recipe for a gardener” back in 1911: “Daylight pulls a flower, and darkness - only greenery. Therefore, leaving the bulbs for too long on the floor in the dark, you can stretch the leaves so that the sultan will be ugly tall and will fall, demanding a garter to the peg, which is ugly ... ”.
At a temperature of + 20 + 22 ° C, forcing is faster, but a temperature of + 18 ° C is more acceptable, since it allows you to get a dense compact flower sultan. In colder conditions (+ 15 ° C), forcing is delayed, and the peduncles outgrow. By the way, there are Rot-forms of popular varieties with shortened peduncles that do not stretch out in forcing. But such bulbs are usually not found on sale, only flowering products are supplied.
So, you expose hyacinths, which have been in the dark, "pulled up" for 2-3 days. Despite the fact that the plants will develop mainly due to the substances accumulated in the bulbs, it is useful to water them with a solution of a special fertilizer for bulbous ones, again - during the period of coloring of the buds. It is watered daily with settled or snowy water at room temperature.
Now plants require additional additional lighting for 10 hours a day (for example, from 10 am to 8 pm). Lighting power should be 100-120 W / m2. Phytolamps, which give the best spectrum for plants, are desirable as light sources. They are placed at a height of 0.5 m. To turn on and off the lighting, it is convenient to use a timer that does this automatically and allows you to adjust the length of daylight hours.
It is possible to distill hyacinths in a completely dark room using artificial lighting, but then the light intensity is increased to 150 W / m2. However, the quality of flowers in the presence of natural light is better.
If you are driving a small number of hyacinths in the springtime, you can place them on a sunny window with an east or southeast orientation and do without artificial light sources.
If all the conditions for distillation are met, hyacinths bloom in about 3 weeks, by the spring this period is reduced to 2 weeks.
When flowering cannot be adjusted to a certain date, you can speed up or slow down development by adjusting the temperature and lighting. Delayed flowering is easy to bring closer by raising the temperature to + 22 ° C and increasing the daylight hours to 12-16 hours. On the contrary, you can slow down development by placing plants with staining buds in a cool, dark place with a temperature of + 2 ° C, and returning them to heat 2-3 days before the intended flowering. In the same conditions, it is possible to store finished products with half-opened inflorescences for 1-2 weeks, given that the growth of peduncles will slowly continue.
In a cool room, potted hyacinths can delight with flowering for 1-2 weeks. If during this time the peduncle is stretched, it is tied to a thin stick installed behind the scales of the bulb.
Forcing hyacinths to cut
For distillation of hyacinths in order to obtain cutting, the bulbs are planted in boxes at the rate of 100-300 bulbs per 1 m2, depending on the size.The cold rooting period is increased by 2 weeks. The lengthening of the cooling period causes the accumulation of more hormones - gibberellins, which are responsible for stretching the peduncles. The cut will be higher. It is cut in full dissolution and wrapped in 1 inflorescence in thin paper, placed in a cardboard box and stored at + 2 ° C. Cutting with unopened, but colored buds is possible; before using in a bouquet, it is placed in lukewarm water overnight, where the flowers begin to bloom.
Dutch growers practice cutting hyacinths with part of the bulb, which increases their transportability and preservation. It has become fashionable to put bulbs - tulips, hyacinths, in transparent vases along with washed bulbs. These design tricks are great if the bulbs are not intended to be used after distillation.
Inflorescences remain in water for 7-10 days. A little Zircon (0.5 ml per 1 liter of water) or Vitalizer HB-101 (2-3 drops per 1 liter of water) will extend the life of flowers even longer.
What to do with hyacinth bulbs after distillation
After flowering, take your time to discard the bulbs. To begin with, remove the faded flowers from the peduncle, water the plant with bulbous fertilizer 1 time and continue at least a week with moderate watering and supplementary lighting of the plants. It is advisable to increase the temperature to + 22 + 230C to activate the process of bud formation of renewal. In such conditions, the bulb will acquire the maximum mass. After a week, leave only natural light and slowly reduce watering. When the green mass begins to turn yellow, stop watering completely and place the pots on their side to better drain the substances from the leaves into the bulb. With complete withering away of the foliage, remove the bulb from the soil, dry it, and store at a temperature of + 170C until the autumn planting in the ground, in early October.
Large bulbs are suitable for re-forcing, but flowering will be much inferior to the first, so it is better to plant them in the soil for growing.
