Oh gosh, this is going to be a good one. So I'm currently planning my wedding, which will be at the end of March. I've been trying to figure out ways to help keep the cost down, and being an avid crafter I'm planning on doing a lot of diy (but hopefully still nice-looking) stuff. Surprisingly (to me anyway) a big expense would be flowers. In true fashion, I thought, "Psh, I could do that." And a little while later, I was anxiously awaiting my package of assorted flower bulbs from easytogrowbulbs.com that I was totally going to grow.
If you read my first gardening post, you learned that I'm absolutely horrible at growing things. So why did I think I could do this? I have this weird cycle where somehow I start believing that I have a green thumb. I go and try to grow plants and then inevitably I end up killing the poor things. It happens every time.
I just so happened to be researching the cost of flowers while I was in the beginning of this cycle and everything came together to form the perfect storm. I'm trying to be optimistic about my chances this time and I made sure to so a lot of research for these flowers so hopefully I'll finally break the cycle if not just for the wedding, for the rest of my life! Also, I totally sent a few backup bulbs to my mom and future mother-in-law because they're much better at this whole plant growing thing then I am. So if I fail, it all falls on their shoulders! All joking aside, if this does fail spectacularly, best case scenario, I'll have enough flowers to arrange a bouquet for myself and I'll just have to diy some different center pieces for the tables. At the moment I'm thinking paper flowers (if done right they can be quite beautiful). Worst case scenario I'll just have to buy some flowers and arrange my bouquet the day/night before.
But enough of all this silly back story, you've come for the good stuff, and here it is! My first, and main flower, the ranunculus:
These things are so weird looking.
I was scared of root rot while trying to germinate these suckers, and I read that you could soak them for 24 hours before planting, then after you plant them you begin to water after they start showing signs of growth.
Oh my, they got quite big.
Time to plant! But one problem. I had forgotten to pick up some rocks and from my basic research, I figured out you need to provide drainage in the bottom of the pot. I didn't feel like going back out during rush hour to get rocks so I did the next best thing; I turned to the internet. "I don't have rocks for the bottom of my pot! What do I do?!" I was surprised to learn that some people suggest using packing peanuts to help with the drainage in the bottom of their pots. Interesting! And guess who had recently received a package filled to the brim with those things?
Looks like packing peanuts it is!
Oh god, I hope those sites I was looking at weren't joke sites and this is actually a thing that people actually do. 
Whelp, it's too late now anyway. Let's plant! So you're supposed to plant these with the tubers pointing down.
I spaced them out evenly and covered with about an inch of soil.
Here are my next flowers: watsonia- snow queen.
These required about four inches of soil on top. Fingers crossed!
And the next flowers are: freesia- double white. Not pictured, me covering these with about an inch of soil.
For buying the amount of bulbs I did, they threw in a free pack of "adventure bulbs" to help encourage people to find our about/grow new flowers. These tiny onion looking bulbs I ended up getting are allium drumstick. We'll see how they go!
Here are but a few of the freshly planted bulbs up on my credenza while they germinate. The plan is to eventually move them outside once they're growing well. (One side note; this is another post that was delayed a bit. I planted everything on the 2nd, so my next update for these guys will seem like they grew super fast when in reality they're normal bulbs with normal growing rates. Nothing super here!)
I sure hope this works out, how great would it be if my first real gardening success was growing flowers for my own wedding!