The truth about Tulips!
Tulips are one of the best selling bulbs of the spring. You might be interested to know that the process to get you the flowers in the spring of 2024 started all the way back in 2022! Buckle up and I will take you through the entire process from start to finish.
So way back in 2022 a farmer in Holland planted a daughter bulb out and let it grow up to be 2-3 more bulbs for 2023. Then in spring of 2023 someone puts in an order for that bulb (Me! Yes, I ordered my bulbs back in February/March). In August of 2023 that bulb was dug up out of the ground and put on a cargo boat and shipped across the ocean to the US. After passing through customs and being shipper to a larger wholesaler, the bulb eventually makes its way to me. I then plant that bulb over and wait for it to flower in the spring of 2024!
Once it is in the cracked bud stage (where the outer petals are starting to crack and I can just barely tell what color it’s going to be), I pull it out the ground, bulb and all. I will then discard the bulb and sell the flower.
If you just gasped, and you think I'm being totally wasteful just throwing bulbs away, it’s okay. I hear that a lot. Let me explain why I’m not a wasteful monster.
First, there are certain varieties of tulips that perennialize well. Darwin hybrids and Fosteriana tulips are great examples. However, with the exception of one Fosteriana variety, they are all single type tulips like those sold at the grocery store. They are great for your landscape but not what I’m after for a cut flower. I want to give you the prettiest tulips available. The ones that can almost trick a florist into thinking they are a peony. The downside is that these varieties are particular and need very unique growing conditions, and even then they are not reliable perennials.
Secondly, to have a tulip come back for a second year, I need to make sure I leave all the foliage until it dies back (think very late spring) and then hope the weather is perfect and they get the perfect amount of rain to split into daughter bulbs and those daughter bulbs to grow large enough to produce a flower. I know for a fact that we do not have the weather for this because in 2022 I had several bulbs snap in the ground when I was trying to pull them. In spring 2023 they produced a very small amount of foliage but not a single one bloomed.
Third, tulips are very disease prone. It is recommended to not grow them in the same place for 7 years. How I deal with this is to create temporary raised beds, or if I want to expand, I build new raised beds, put my tulips down, cover with compost, and then after I pull the tulips I plant something else in that bed.
Lastly, pulling the bulb gives me several extra inches of stem length. This mean the tulips are just going to look better in your vase!
Trust me, if flower farmers could profitably perennialize tulips and save time on ordering, save money on the bulbs and the shipping costs, save time on planting them every year, we would.
Tulips come in several different petal types and then many different colors within those types leading to thousands of varieties. The four main types are single, double, fringed, and parrot. I grow mostly doubles, with a few fringes and parrots, and just one single variety thrown into the mix. The plan is to have a rainbow of textures and varieties available to you this spring.
Are there other questions that you have about tulips? Leave them in the comments!
