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Welcome to Grow Cook It Range, the podcast of me, Sarah Raven.

And today I'm with Josie the head gardener at Perch Hill,

who is going to share doing November question and answers,

sort of horticultural cue and a for us for this month,

as she has, the previous months actually. But anyway,

so let's start. The first one that we've been sent in is about forcing bulbs. And are we now

too late to get bulbs for Christmas? Well, the first thing I just wanted to mention was what does

it mean a forced bulb versus a garden bulb? A force bulb just

simply means that it's been put down to a lower temperature. And I'm not a total expert on this,

but I think it's somewhere between three and five degrees. And it's kept in a fridge at that

temperature for four to six weeks or a little bit longer to make it feel like it's had winter.

So then when you bring it out or plant it in a normal temperature condition, it thinks it springs.

So the forcing process of putting it in a fridge makes it think it's had winter.

And so then it comes out of that and it thinks, oh, it's spring.

I'm going to grow now.

And so that forces it out of its natural growth curve and starts it off early.

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