WITH summer barely over, it hardly seems the right time to start thinking about Christmas – but if you want a splash of colour indoors during the festive season, now is the time to prepare forced bulbs in pots.

You can have a mass of colour and fragrance indoors in winter with deliciouslyscented hyacinths, hippeastrums, irises, grape hyacinths, snowdrops and miniature daffodils, which can all be forced to brighten up your home in winter. Go to your garden centre now and look out for bulbs marked “prepared”, which are specially adapted to bloom earlier than usual.

Prepared bulbs have been given an artificial cold period for a number of weeks in conditions that imitate winter to speed up the natural flowering cycle.

For me, the hyacinth is probably the best bulb for forcing.

Its fragrance will fill a room and the choice of colours available is vast, from white, to pink, red, deep purple and almost every hue in between.

Bulbs should be planted in bowls filled with moist bulb fibre, close together so they are not quite touching one another, and with their growing tips just sticking out above the top of the compost.

Don’t firm the bulb fibre down or it may hinder the root system establishing quickly. Make sure you don’t overwater them, especially if the container doesn’t have drainage holes, or the bulbs will rot.

They should be placed in a cool, dark place such as the shed or a closed cupboard in a cold room, to encourage the flowering stems to develop before the leaves. It also enables the root system to become well-established. If the bulb fibre becomes dry at any time, water carefully between the bulbs.

The bowls should be left in the dark for about eight weeks, or until the new shoots are about 1-2in (4- 5cm) high. The flower buds which you can see between the tips of the leaves should just be starting to show signs of colour.

Once they have reached this shade, they can be brought out into the light, but avoid putting them in direct sunlight.

They are best off in a cool room on a windowsill, but preferably not near a radiator.

If you remove the bulbs too early, the leaves will grow too quickly and will obscure the flowers.

While most hyacinths will stand up on their own, I tend to put pea sticks in the pots to support the heavy flowers, which otherwise may droop prematurely.

After flowering, the dead flowers should be cut off and then the bulbs can be planted outdoors and should flower after several years.

You can also force hyacinth bulbs in water, in special glasses designed to hold just one bulb, with its base at water level. The bulb should be kept in a cool room and the water level kept topped up just below the bottom of the bulb. You will see that it soon produces roots which grow down into the water.

When the flower buds start showing colour, move the bulb in its glass bowl into a warm, brightly-lit room. After flowering, you just throw the bulb away as it won’t give you a good display in subsequent years.

Some daffodils, including Narcissus ‘Paper White’, can be grown indoors in bulb fibre in the same way as hyacinths, although they do need more light and once you bring them out of the dark, they can immediately be placed on a sunny windowsill.

If you don’t give them enough light, they may become too tall and will need staking.

Stick with the same varieties of hyacinths, as some grow quicker than others. Single varieties of bulbs such as snowdrops and dwarf narcissi also make more of a statement when planted en masse in pots.

When Christmas comes and colour and fragrance fills your home, you won’t be sorry you made a little bit of effort with some prepared bulbs in autumn.