Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - January 2015

Happy Garden Blogger's Bloom Day and welcome to Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day for January 2015.

Here in my USDA Hardiness Zone 6a garden in central Indiana, it's wintertime.

This means it's cold, it gets dark too early and mornings are slow to arrive.  We've had some colder than normal days, too, but not as cold as last January.

Oh, and we haven't had as much snow, so far, as at this point last winter.

But enough about the weather.

I'm a gardener and so I've figured out how to have blooms in the wintertime, at least indoors.

I always plant up a few amaryllis bulbs around Thanksgiving. The big white blooms pictured above are the end of the season of amaryllis blooms for me.  These are just regular ol' big box amaryllis bulbs.  They are fairly inexpensive so I don't know if I'll try to summer them over and get them to bloom next year, or treat them like annual flowers and compost them in the spring.

One plant I've kept for years in the sunroom is my jewel orchid, Ludisia discolor.

It blooms consistently every January.  Sadly, though, as a plant it is just hanging on so there is just one bloom spike this year. I repotted it a while back, so hopefully, that will help it to hang on and maybe send up some new growth.

A new bloom for me last year was Lily of the Valley, Convallaria majalis, and I couldn't resist buying more pre-chilled pips and growing it again this year.

Oh yes, it is worth the price to smell the scent of Lily of the Valley in the wintertime.

There are some other blooms in the sun room -- a little pink fibrous rooted begonia, a hot pink kalanchoe and crown of thorns in both pink and yellow. Those plants have a few blooms on them most of the time so they are "nothing to write home about".

But I will soon be writing about the Hyacinths I'm forcing into bloom on vases.

These hyacinths and a few other types of bulbs I'm forcing into bloom should be blooming by February bloom day, if not sooner.

And who knows, depending on how this winter goes, I could have some outdoor blooms to write about then, too.

What's blooming in your garden on this January bloom day?

We'd love to have you join in for Garden Blogger's Bloom Day and show us what's blooming in your garden right now. It's easy to participate.

Just post on your blog about what's blooming in your garden today and then leave a comment below and put a link to your post in the Mr. Linky Widget. If Mr. Linky doesn't cooperate for you, send me an email, and I'll help you out as soon as I can.

We can have flowers nearly every month of the year. ~ Elizabeth Lawrence