After I soaked them the ranunculas corms on February 8th they spent two weeks out on the deck in the cold and dark to pre-sprout roots. Then last week I brought them in to a slightly warmer spot (10C/50F) near a bright, south-facing window for seven days. When I dug down a bit in their trays I could see that most of the corms had roots sprouting, and a few were even starting to push up green leaves. The photo may not look very impressive because most of the growth is underground-- but if you look carefully in the bottom right corner a little bit of vegetative growth is evident. Apparently it is important to transplant them before they have four leaves, or the plants will be stunted; that happened with some of mine last year. Temperatures are forecast to be above freezing going forward, so it seemed to me that these little guys were ready for life outdoors.
I managed to get most of them planted out in the garden this afternoon. I added some dry organic fertilizer, bone meal, and oyster shell meal; the bone and oyster shell meal are in supposed to give them strong stems. They say that the biggest mistake people make is to water them too much, so I didn't water them at all. There is enough moisture in the soil here, so I am going to leave the irrigating to Mother Nature. I still have one tray full of corms to plant; if the weather is nice tomorrow I might plant them, or I may hold that tray back for a few more days to see if that makes for stronger growth.
