first week of December

These are all my hyacinth bulbs out of the dark so far.

After the first lot shown below from December 1st, I took more out the next day. I want to show how the bulbs look when they are ready to come out of the dark. Maybe some of this is my instinct and experience but I like making things as easy  as possible so anyone can do it.

the green flower bud is emerging from the bulb

sometimes you can see the green flower but sometimes you need to go by the shape, eg the Tye vase, left below

when the stem is opening up (and the bulge of the flower has moved up), they are ready to come out of the dark

The bulbs in the front, left and right, show the green flower emerging from the bulbs. The downside of a container with more than one bulb, whether bulb fibre or pebbles and water (as on the left), the bulbs may develop at different rates, eg the one in the middle is noticeably smaller. I guess I tend to bring the container out into the light when some bulbs are ready and hope the less developed bulbs catch up.

December 1st is the traditional time to get bulbs out of the dark if they are to bloom by Christmas. They need to have the bulge of the flower out of the bulb. This was my first lot out of the cellar.

Some of the bulbs have differently shaped buds depending on which variety, eg back left looks like Delft Blue, the small one in the frilled vase back right looks distinctive, can't remember the variety right now but I can say not Delft Blue.  Will check my notes later today and update which varieties are in each vase.

the vase on the left is by GP Tye and marked as such on the bottom, the vase on the right is extremely similar but unmarked and I am certain it is NOT Tye, I have other similar examples which will be out of the cellar in coming weeks so I will be able to post pics of them soon

when these 2 vases are compared, they are extremely similar but I can see the vase behind on either side