Growing Our Tulips

Tulips are an incredible flower. Even when dormant, they are constantly monitoring their environment. In the summer, the bulb is counting heat units and forms the flower inside the bulb.  For instance, if you cut a tulip bulb in half in the fall, the flower is completely formed inside.  You can see the tiny petals, and other flower parts so careful handling of tulips is needed including not exposing bulbs to ethylene gases from fruit and rotting bulbs.  Ethylene gases and high temperatures can abort the flower inside the bulb. 

We plant our bulbs in October, once the soil temperature has cooled to help limit the disease pressure as certain diseases are more active in warmer temperatures.  Once planted, the tulip monitors the cold and spreads its roots. Once it gets enough “chilling”, the bulb sprouts the top growth. Variation in late winter and early spring temperatures can vary blooms times up to a month.  This is one of the reasons it is hard to know exact dates of when peak bloom in the field will be as late winter and early spring temperatures vary.  The bloom also varies with the category of tulips, meaning single early tulips need less cold to bloom than single late tulips.  In this way, the bloom in the field (or your yard) can be extended by several weeks.   

We pick some tulips in the field.  We pick the flowers in what is called the green bud stage when the buds just have a little color.  The flowers are taken to our packing shed where we put sleeves on the flowers, put them trays upright and into water at 33 degrees.  This slows the transpiration of the flowers and keeps the flowers fresh for a longer period.  Once purchased and taken home, these flowers should last at least a week.  Our farm used to supply several of the larger stores with flowers, but our focus has changed, and we now sell most of our flowers on site and through nonprofits.  The admission you pay to come to our farm allows us to leave a good portion of our crop (our cut flowers) in the field for everyone to enjoy.  

Once the flower petals are about to fall, we remove the flower and seed pod. This is called topping.  This allows all the energy in the leaves and stem to fill out the daughter bulbs instead of sending the energy to seed production (a seed can take up to 7 years to bloom).  Once “topped” we allow the plant to dry down slowly.  In early June, we dig all the bulbs in the field, dry them and separate the bulbs.  We have an air wall where we place the totes of bulbs, so they have access to fresh air all summer long until it is time to plant again.