Growing Saffron Indoors (The A – Z Guide)

Growing saffron indoors can be an exciting experience for you and your family. The only thing you should do is buy some saffron bulbs and prepare some pots. Then you can harvest two grams of saffron per 1 kg of saffron bulbs. Each kg of corms should be used for one square meter.

Also, this work can be a suitable test for growing saffron on a large economic scale. In other words, if you aren’t sure about the suitability of your region for saffron cultivation, you can do this method of growing saffron for the test.

Your product will be organic and full of benefits for your health. Growing saffron indoors can be done in a garden, box, or pots, so if you are ready, you can start with 20 median corms; 20 median bulbs are suitable for an ordinary box.

Once when I went to visit a friend’s house, he asked me to plant the saffron bulbs he had just bought for him.

He also shot a short video while working, which I wanted to share with you here so that you can see that you can grow your own saffron easily without any special equipment and with just a few saffron bulbs.

1. Saffron Bulbs

The first thing is preparing saffron bulbs. You can buy organic bulbs online or from local shops. The suitable bulbs for Growing saffron indoors should be large (more than 12 g) and have been disinfected.

Remember when you prepare corms, plant them as soon as possible. Because when saffron bulbs are out of the soil, they will be in danger of infection and illness.

The middle of summer is the best time for buying and planting saffron corms. At this time, the bulbs are in the sleep phase, and their displacement is not harmful. Any stress can cause a decrease in your saffron production, so be careful about your corms.

2. Prepare the Pots

In this step, you should prepare some pots, every five bulbs need one small pot. We have an exciting process called saffron bulb multiplication, and it means if you plant five bulbs in pots this year, you will have more than twenty saffron bulbs in the seventh year.

The pots should have proper drainage to exit the excess water, It is an essential thing for all plants. You can use each container the growing saffron and it isn’t any problem, but your pots deep should be at least 25 cm. It is not about saffron roots; this is about saffron propagation and its physiological functions.

3. Prepare Suitable Soil

What do you think about this step and why suitable preparing soil is essential?

While we can displace the bulbs every summer, the soil that we use for growing saffron in pots will stay in pots for seven years, and it’s necessary to be rich in nutrients, so prepare the best rich possible soil.

Saffron farms create for one time and produce saffron for at least seven years or even ten years. That means we aren’t forced to plow farms every year, and we should care about soil nutrients and farm pests. This farming method has some advantages and disadvantages that we will discuss soon.

You can use garden soil and some enriching fertilizers such as rotten cow manure1 or leaf soil fertilizer to prepare your soil. Be careful about weed seed sources, and don’t mix them with your soil.

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4. Plant Saffron Bulbs in the Pots

After buying and disinfecting saffron corms, you should plant them in the pots. Dig a pit 20 cm deep, put five or six bulbs, and pour soil into a hole. Look at the below picture and be careful about the distance of the corms.

I suggest you watch the video below too.

5. Water and Fertilizer

Saffron is a plant with low water requirements in the vegetative season and doesn’t need any water in the summer. The first water should do in the first month of fall. This water must be deep and full of nutrients. It can help corms to enter their growth phase.

The second saffron water is after harvesting saffron on the 50th day of fall, and this water is critical too. The role of this water is to help propagate saffron bulbs. We usually use organic fertilizer for this step of nutrition.

3rd and 4th step of water is optional and done in winter. These waters can help saffron bulbs to get bigger. Your bulbs increase every year so that every mother bulb can divide into 2 or 3 daughter bulbs.

6. Harvesting Saffron

After 45 days of fall, saffron flowers appear. At this time, we should Harvest, Cleaning, and Dry saffron flowers. We should pick up flowers in the early morning and then separate stigmas from other flower parts. Look at the below picture to learn how to clean saffron flowers.

Each of the bulbs that be more than 8gr can be flowering, and if it is more than 15gr can sometimes flower in the growing season.

After cleaning the saffron flowers, you will have wet saffron threads. Note that this saffron can’t be used and first should be dried. You can use heating devices to dry saffron. Spread saffron on paper and put it on the heating device, this process may take two to three hours.

Whenever the humidity of the saffron gets to less than 10%, saffron is dried and ready to store or use. For two years, you can store the saffron in a cool, dark, and dry environment.

Our consultants are ready to answer your questions about growing saffron indoors. You can comment on your questions below this post, we will be accountable as soon as possible.

Source of some images