Ranunculus Planting Tutorial

Easily one of the funniest looking bulbs, it's not really a bulb, it's a corm that you can plant in your garden this fall for spring blooms, is ranunculus. They look like tiny little octopus with long tentacles and they come in a variety of sizes. This is what they look like when you receive them. They're dry but they are a beautiful flower you definitely need to plant. So these are the dry ones. I do have some that I've already soaked because to plant ranunculus corms you need to soak them in water for a minimum of four to six hours, nice cold water prior to plant. So when we're planting ranunculus we want to make sure that they go in a very sunny spot. They love sun and they're actually sun dependent. They need 90 days of great sunlight in order to start growing. So we're going to plant these about two inches deep, no more than two inches, and about five to six inches apart with the tentacle side pointing down. So I want to make sure that now that they're soaked they're a little bit more pliable and I want to keep them five to six inches apart here. I've actually taken several varieties, mixed them together in my water so I don't really know what color is going where, but I'm kind of partial to the romance variety. So I've got some of those in here and a tecalote, those are in here too, and I'm planting those tentacles down five to six inches apart. I'm going to lightly cover them with soil. You'll notice that your ranunculus are going to start growing pretty quickly, even in these cold winter months. So they're going to grow to about two or three inches and then they're just going to naturally stop. You'll see little leaves sticking up above the soil. They're just going to pause. That's a great time to either put a hoop over them if you're in a really cold zone. If you're probably zone six, seven, eight, you'll need to hoop them. Nine, ten, you don't need to. You can plant these out as early as December, January in the cooler months for you guys. If you are zones five, four, definitely maybe six, you can actually wait till February or so to plant these so that they will start blooming in the spring. I'm going to plant mine now because I'm in zone eight. I might put a little bit of mulch over the top of these, little frost cloth, and I should be okay in the spring when it starts warming up again. They're going to wake up and start re-blooming and so I'll take the tops off and they're going to be gorgeous cut flowers. If you want to learn more about growing ranunculus, our friend Micro Flower Farm has a great class on what kinds to grow, how to grow them, how to plant them, and even how to start them indoors if you want.