By DEBBIE TEASHON
Garden Life columnist

With recent events revolving around alcoholic beverages, it is not surprising I would turn my November column into how-to-liquor-up-paperwhites to stunt their growth.

Lately I have had alcohol on my mind. Not from drinking it though, but because a new book that I co-authored with Wendy Tweten and photographed came out this fall. “Gardening for the Homebrewer” is a how-to on growing ingredients in your garden for making all types of adult beverages. Since then, the past month and a half has been like an alcohol-induced binge of speaking engagements and preparing for them, coupled with keeping our publicist Lola armed with information so she can do her job. Lately my mantra is, whatever Lola wants, Lola gets.

Of course, I drank a few glasses of perry, and sip-tested my experimental handmade liqueurs in the interim — all done in the name of research and demonstrations. All I need to do now is convince my accountant when I turn in my receipts.

Now is the time to share the hard stuff with plants. A decade ago, I learned how to use alcohol to keep paperwhites from becoming tipsy. Sound oxymoronic? Yet it’s true. Years of using stakes to keep the paperwhite daffodils from flopping over from the weight of their lovely, fragrant flowers, someone needed to do something. Someone did! However, I thought the solution to floppy stems would come from someone breeding stockier paperwhites, not having them grow up on gin.

Using alcohol on your bulbs stunts their growth, making shorter stems that are stocky enough to support the flowers without flopping over. The alcohol does not affect the blossoms; they remain just as large, beautiful, and fragrant as their teetotalling counterparts do, while reducing the stems by one-half to one-third shorter.

This is the perfect time to force your paperwhites so they will blossom in time for the holidays. Ready-to-force bulbs are available now at your local garden centers. Plant them in brandy snifters, glass bowls, votive candleholders, and beautiful pottery — anything that can hold water. Add colorful glass, marbles, or pebbles  to sit the bulbs on and keep their bottoms out of the liquid.

For this project, use the unflavored hard stuff — gin, rum, whiskey, and tequila (with or without the worm). Your lighter liquors such as beer or wine have sugars in them that seriously harm the bulbs. However, if you are hard-up for hard liquor, you can use rubbing alcohol (isopropyl alcohol) instead. Don’t indulge in it yourself, just let the plants imbibe.

Leave it to a university to come up with a brilliant solution involving alcohol. Although it is unknown why alcohol stunts a plant’s growth, William Miller a professor of horticulture and undergrad Erin Finan conducted a Dutch-funded, Cornell University study. When asked how alcohol affects the plants, Miller explained, “We don’t know, but we’re working on this. We think it simply might be water stress; that is, the alcohol makes it more difficult for the plant to absorb water, so the plant suffers a slight lack of water, enough to reduce leaf and stem growth, but not enough to affect flower size or flower longevity.”

Plant your paperwhite bulbs as you normally do, in gravel, small pebbles, glass beads, or marbles. Add water up to just below the bottom of the bulb; any higher and the bulb will rot sitting in water. The roots will find their way to the liquid. Miller suggests you wait at least a week until the roots grow and the green shoots grow up about one to two inches above the bulb. Pour the water out and replace with a 4-6 percent alcohol solution. It’s important not to go with higher alcohol percentages as it may overdose your plants and possibly kill them. Continue using this solution until your bulbs begin to flower.

For the recommended 4-6 percent dilution, use a 40 percent alcohol such as found in most rum, gin, and vodka, mix 1-part spirits to 7-parts water. If you grow your bulbs in potting soil in a pot with drain holes, dilute your spirits 1:8. For higher alcohol percentages, such as found in Everclear, do the math to dilute the 95 percent higher concentration to the recommended dilution, preferably before drinking it yourself, or playing with matches.

And remember; if you join your paperwhites in having an adult beverage, always drink responsibly.

— Co-author and photographer for “Gardening for the Homebrewer,” Teashon also gives local gardening advice on her website Rainy Side Gardeners at www.rainyside.com.