status of the hyacinth bulbs and the crocus and tulip bulbs

Checking on the hyacinth bulbs today (after 7 weeeks in the dark) shows many have masses of roots and many have flower stems sprouting. Of course they should be kept in the cellar (or similar dark environment) for another 5 weeks until about December 1st when the flower stem with the bulge of the flower has emerged from the bulb. I just took them out to take a photo.

Unlike previous years many of the bulbs have a coating of mold. It does seem to be quite warm still in the cellar and it's certainly damp, both with all the rain in recent weeks and my cellar is damp anyway. I'm not sure why some bulbs have it and some do not. I will have to note it in my spreadsheet and see if there's any correlation with hyacinth variety.

4 of the vases below have prominent stems sprouting. It will be interesting to see if there is a correlation with hyacinth variety for this as well.

Some of the crocus bulbs have lots of roots but not all of them; they aren't nearly as consistent as the hyacinths. I find the crocus bulbs (and tulip bulbs), unlike the hyacinth bulbs, benefit from actually sitting in the water. The hyacinths will rot if they sit in water.

All of the small vases below are actually crocus vases. I'm using them for small tulip bulbs. As far as I know there are no "official" tulip vases so we just have to improvise any vase that will hold a tulip bulb which do vary in size depending on the variety. Most of the tulip bulbs below are quite small and can fit easily in a crocus vase. The tall black vase is a truffle bottle holding a slightly larger tulip bulb as is the darker blue vase in the middle.

A comparison of bulb sizes, below left to right: large hyacinth, average hyacinth, small tulip, crocus, very small tulip.