Specialty Gardening: Yup, stick it in a bucket and force it to bloom, 1 by BLOSSOMBUDDY

BLOSSOMBUDDY wrote:
Hiya Indy-v!

The best luck I have had with rooting forsythia is to do tip cuttings and put the cuttings in rooting hormone and potting soil.

The bucket method is great for forcing them to bloom, or in your case leaf out. If you are leafing, I would say the -7 degrees may have triggered them not to bloom. Did you put the bucket in the dark when you started? That usually fools them to thinking it is a change of season...but you need to do that for about 10days to 2 weeks then bring them to the light. If you take them too close to spring, then they are sometimes beyond blooming if you have suffered a cold snap and teh cold sets them back again. But maybe they will bloom, just wait and see. If all else fails when the temps get warm for outside, just leave them in the bucket and forget about them other than to keep the bucket full for several weeks and see what happens, Cant hurt! Worse you can have is a bunch of dead cuttings! LOL

Rooting most woodies does not work in the bucket. However it does work well for species that like its feet wet, case in point willows...

Check the roots on these puppies! These are the willow cuttings I started this thread with!

Um, when you try to start your new forsythias for rooting, take about a 3 inch tip cut. You can use a flat cell tray to do a bunch in and keep the potting medium damp. It helps to do them in a greenhouse so you can over the top water them too. Least as this is what works for me!

I have only had one year where I started cuttings like this in the bucket where I was forcing blooms. For some reason I left the bucket outside and well, they started getting root nubs so then I planted them in pots and kept them soggy until fall and planted them then. Maybe someone else has a way that works for them.

I do spirea and boxwood the same way. I am going to try some flowering almonds this year.. never tried them that way, but wahat the heck!