'Forced' Bulbs Bloom
Without Winter Wait

New Yorker Terry Foster was stunned when he stepped out of the car at his Hamptons home last spring: All he saw was bare earth. Every last one of the 3,000 tulips he'd laboriously planted the previous fall had been eaten by squirrels. When he rushed to the local nursery for plants to fill the empty beds, Mr. Foster got another shock. There, already growing in pots and ready to bloom, were thousands of bulbs -- tulips, hyacinths and daffodils. He bought hundreds.

Planting bulbs in the spring? Until now, it would have been horticultural heresy. The iron-clad rule has been that bulbs must winter underground. Which meant anyone who wanted colorful beds full of flowers come April had to spend November weekends in the joint-numbing ritual of planting bulbs.

Finally, there's hope for the chilblained, the squirrel-plagued and the just plain lazy: presprouted bulbs, which this year have made their way into nurseries across the country. Stick'em in the ground and two weeks later you'll have beds full of flowers.

Gardeners have always "forced "bulbs indoors, tricking them into thinking they've spent a winter in the ground by storing them in the refrigerator, then putting them on a sunny windowsill until they bloom. Now, the Dutch growers who control the world-wide bulb market are doing the same thing on a massive scale. First they plant the bulbs in soil-filled flats or pots, then chill them to simulate winter. In the spring, the bulbs are shipped to U.S. nurseries and stored outdoors, where they sprout.

But isn't this, uh, cheating? So what, says Derek Fell, a Philadelphia garden-book author, and usually a garden traditionalist. "Florists and commercial landscapers have had presprouted bulbs available to them for many years. Why shouldn't we?" Many gardeners seem to feel the same way. The bulbs were first introduced three years ago; sales are "growing rapidly," according to a spokesman for the bulb growers. Home Depot Inc. will sell about 400,000 of the presprouts in its Northeast stores alone this year.

Do the bulbs perform? We planted a minigarden of them last April. As promised, they bloomed after two weeks. The real test: Would they return this year, as they would have if the bulbs had received an "honest " fall planting? They did.

Still, these aren't likely to be a hit with garden snobs. The varieties available are limited, and prices are steep. A spot check of nurseries in three states turned up only one variety of daffodil and one of hyacinth. Six types of tulips were in stock, but they were labeled only by color -- purple, white, etc. -- a turn-off to variety-obsessed bulb fanatics. And the bulbs cost as much as four times what they would in the autumn. The growers say the higher costs cover the months of chilling, plus handling and packaging.

But when you need bulbs, you need bulbs. With spring running late, Nancy Szerlag, an Attica, Mich., writer, just paid $150 for 100 presprout tulips to brighten up her garden for her sister's wedding reception. "I call this a plant emergency," Ms. Szerlag says.

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