Gin is better than rubbing alcohol. [View all]

Before you worry that I've gone off the deep end in search of a cut-rate martini, this post is a follow-up to mine on DU2 about using alcohol to stunt the growth of paperwhites and thus prevent toppling over.

The link I originally posted on DU2 suffered from having the WRONG kind of flower in the accompanying picture but, once I really started researching this, I found all the info links back to a study done at Cornell University. (http://blogs.cornell.edu/hort/2009/11/10/pickling-your-paperwhites)

I planted a "control" batch in water, a batch in a water/rubbing alcohol mix and a batch in a water/gin mix.

See the Cornell article for the details but, in a nutshell, the ratios are ten-or-eleven-to-one water-to-rubbing alcohol and eight-to-one water-to-gin (or any other 80-proof liquor, I just had leftover gin from a party.)

Per the instructions, I started all the paperwhites in water and when the roots were a couple of inches long, I poured out the water and replaced it with the alcohol-water mix and continued to water with that mix for the life of the plant.


The water and RA plants were planted about a week earlier than the gins, but all are full grown. I put books under some so that the bulbs would all be at the same height.



The water plants needing typing up well before Christmans and keeled over again just minutes before the photoshoot. In truth, the door is propping them up.

As you can see, the RA barely stunted growth at all and those plants still needed to be tied together to prevent toppling. I used an 11-to-1 ratio, so perhaps the 10-to-one ratio would have worked better. I also got more yellowing earlier in the tips of the RA plants.

The gin really worked. Anywhere from 25-65% shorter plants.

The flowers, fragrance and everything else was the same across all plants.

I am starting a new batch of 6 bulbs in one planter with gin to see if the fact that the gin bulbs were singles/pairs impacted the results at all. Also doing some pairs in RA. Will post a pic of these when they are grown.

(Picked up second round of bulbs at an end-of-season sale. They were marked 60% off and the manager gave me two-for-one on top of that-- 24 bulbs for just under $5. Hurray for bargain experiments! )