How To Force Flowering Branches Indoors

This time of year I always try to bring a little bit of the outdoors inside. Especially when Mother Nature smacks me upside the head with a few snowballs like she did last weekend.

And one of my favorite ways to do this is by forcing flowering branches to bloom indoors. Yes, tree branches inside the house!!!

And it’s so easy it’s silly!

How To Force Flowering Branches Indoors:

When To Cut

• You can cut branches in late winter before buds are showing and wait and wait and wait for them to bloom.
• Or as I prefer, wait until spring to cut the branches when you see buds just starting to plump up and almost open. Much less wait time for your blooms!
• The closer you cut the branch to its natural bloom time, the quicker the flowers will bloom inside the house for you.

How To Cut

• Use clean, sharp hand pruners
• Make the cut down at the bottom, right above where the branch meets a larger branch (see 1st first photo below)
• Cut at an angle
• Remove any small twigs and leaves close to the bottom of the branch
• Hitting the base of the cut stem with a hammer to squash open the branch a bit helps the branch to absorb more water (see 2nd photo below)

How To Arrange

• Arrange branches in tall vases, canisters or narrow mouthed jugs. Mason jars work just fine also!
• Fill vases with a few inches of water and keep the water fresh.
• Putting your arrangements in a cool spot out of direct sunlight can help to make the blooms last longer.

Speaking of great vases, Manuela from A Cultivated Nest has a great idea of turning a glass apple juice jug into a stunning Pottery Barn inspired vase for spring branches.

Source:  A Cultivated Nest

I checked and my local Krogers has glass jugs of apple juice in their healthy/organic/tastes-like-cardboard foods section. You can also buy the juice in glass jugs at Whole Foods.

Branches That Make Lovely Blooms

• Dogwood
• Apple
• Crabapple
• Cherry
• Pear
• Mock Orange
• Flowering Quince
• Magnolia
• Lilac
• Forsythia
• Pussy Willow

(the flowers in this photo are crabapple)

You can see more of my crabapple blooms in my Jadeite Green And Crabapples post and in my Crabapple Blossoms post, where I stole originally used the green chalkboard & crabapple photos.

Have you forced flowering branches before? What’s you favorite one to force?

And BTW, forcing sounds so violent! It’s such a harsh word for such a pretty thing!

(This post contains some affiliate links for your convenience. You can read my full disclosure policy here.)

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