Cut Flowers

• The cut flowers you buy at our farm have been "Hydro-cooled", that is, placed in water after picking to help ensure a long life and placed in a cooler at 32 degrees to slow down the respiration and breakdown of the flower. Flowers are also picked prior to opening and placed in protective sleeves to help prevent bruising and other damage to the flower. These flowers will open in a few days and last much longer than flowers that are picked open.
• Our flowers travel well and will survive many hours without water. When you arrive home, just re-cut the ends of the stems and place in clean cold water. Even very limp flowers will revive.
• For longer lasting flower arrangements, remove foliage below the water line. This foliage will decompose quickly and spoil the water if left on. Also keep cut flowers out of direct sunlight, protect from heat and drafts and add cold water as needed. Start with a clean vase as bacteria in a dirty vase can shorten the life of your flowers.
• To keep cut tulips fresh and vigorous , be sure to keep the water in the vase "topped off" with fresh cold water every day or two. Flowers kept in a cool location in a room will also last much longer. Change the water completely every couple of days. This will prevent harmful levels of bacteria from developing in the water, reducing the life of the flower.
• Unlike most cut flowers, tulips keep growing in the vase, sometimes up to 6 inches or more! For the longest enjoyment, buy cut tulips when the buds are still closed but the color of the flower is evident.
• Fresh cut tulips are geotropic and phototropic, meaning that their growth is affected by gravity and light, respectively. Blooms will always curve upwards and bend towards sources of light.
• Avoid adding gin, vodka or pennies to the tulip water, brushing the blooms with egg whites or piercing the stems just under the bloom. None of these "home remedies" has ever proved to have any real benefits.
• Before combining cut tulips and daffodils in one vase make sure to place daffodils in their own water first; if you don't, the sap like liquid that daffodils emit will kill your tulip flowers.

top of page

Dealing with Animals

• Placing loose plastic mesh over flower beds at planing time allows the flowers to grow through the mesh, but prevents the squirrels from digging.
• Motion detection sprinklers create a sudden burst of water that will frighten squirrels away temporarily.
• Place ground chili pepper; (Thai chilies, habaneras, cascabel) in flower pots and garden beds. The capsicum in peppers make it unpleasent for digging squirrels.
• To keep animals like moles and squirrels away from your bulbs, plant bulbs distasteful to rodents such as daffodils, alliums or fritillarias.
• Slugs can be a major pest of bulbs. They will eat holes in tulip and hyacinth leaves. If your daffodil flowers are not opening right, look closely, slugs don't eat the foliage of daffodils, but they do eat the flower.
• Although daffodils bulbs are poisonous, the flowers are a tasty delicacy for slugs.
• Smells such as castor oil, coffee grounds, or used kitty litter placed at the entrances of mole tunnles near your flower beds will keep moes from invading your flowers.
• Things with strong human or predator scents like hair clippings or urine sprinkled around your flower beds is a natural repellent for deer.
• Deer are repelled by strong odors; staking or shaving strong-smelling soap around the perimeter of your yeard will help turn deer away.
• Physical barries such as clear fishing line or strips of aluminum foil around the perimeter of your yeard will help scare or keep deer out.

top of page

Bulb Care

• Flower bulbs are nature’s natural computer chips. They record the season’s temperature, moisture and air quality and when certain requirements are met, specific things happen. For example, when you plant your bulbs in the fall, a certain amount of moisture is needed for the roots to emerge. During the winter, most spring flowering bulbs need a certain amount of cold units before they will bloom. After blooming and the plant has dried down, the bulb keeps track of heat units. When they receive enough, a flower is formed for the coming season (for tulips, sometime in late July).
• Each garden contains its own micro climate. Bulbs planted against the southern side of your house may bloom up to a week earlier than the same ones planted on the north side. Bulbs planted in dense shade may be twice as tall as those planted in full sun. Cities tend to be warmer than rural areas. Bulbs planted by a warm sidewalk may push out of the ground earlier due to the warmth absorbed by the concrete. Early shoot growth in the fall doesn't seem to affect the bulbs ability to bloom the following spring.
• The brown outer covering of a tulip is called a tunic. This often protects the bulb early in the summer but by the time we ship them to you, these have broken off or cracked. This doesn’t hurt the bulb and actually makes it easier for the bulb to root
• High soil temperatures create an environment for many diseases that attack bulbs. For this reason we recommend that you don't plant your bulbs in the fall until soil temperatures start to cool. (or fall below 60 degrees)
• You do not need to dig and divide your tulips every year. Just make sure they are not in an area of the yard where they will be watered all summer.
• Most bulbs will rot in standing water so avoid areas prone to flooding such as the bottom of hills or especially under drainpipes!
• Plant your bulbs in full sun so they don't spend extra energy looking for light. Plants in shade will be taller, thinner stemmed and weaker. The extra energy spent looking for light also makes them more susceptible to disease and less likely to bloom again.
• In late January and February, inspect for "fire heads" on tulips. This appears as a gray fuzz on the tips of the foliage. These are actually botrytis spores and can spread to all your tulips. Pull out the entire infected plant and bulb, and discard to control the disease. Botrytis is called Fire Flight because of its rapid spread (do not mulch diseased plants, it will only create a bigger problem).
• Gravitropism is a big word that means your bulbs are internally programmed so that the roots grow down and the shoots up! So relax if you think your 3 year old planted them upside down, the bulbs will figure it out.
• Water is critical for spring flowering bulbs. Water your bulbs after planting unless it has already started to rain and the soil is moist. Water is needed in late winter and early spring when the plants emerge. At this time most bulbs require about 17" of water a week. This is especially critical for potted bulbs where missing a watering can result in an aborted flower or yellowing foliage. After flowering however, it is natural for the foliage to yellow and dry out. When this starts to happen, discontinue watering.
• The trick to growing tulips, crocus and hyacinths in warm weather gardens (USDA zones 9 & warmer) is to give them a "Cold treatment" to fool them into thinking they've gone through a cold winter.
• If you plant your bulbs in containers, watch the weather for prolonged cold spells that could freeze your pots solid. When this happens, the water in the soil freezes and expands, damaging the bulb. Although the tulip has a protective layer of scales around its core, a long hard freeze will destroy it. Move these inside or mulch heavily. This also applies to areas where the soil freezes deeper than the planted bulbs.
• If you dig your bulbs, separate the bulbs and take off the old roots. It is important that the bulbs are completely dry before storing or they will rot. To dry bulbs, put on a mesh tray in the shade outside for a day or two before storing them. Good air circulation in storage is also important and never ever store in an airtight container.
• Break off faded blooms before the flowers have started to set seed. This allows all the energy in the plant to go into the bulb for next year's bloom.
• Spring flowering bulbs do not benefit from granular fertilizer applied during or after bloom. The best time to fertilize is at planting or in late winter when they first emerge. High nitrogen fertilizers may also increase fungal diseases.
• Many spring flowers are sensitive to the weather. Tulips and crocus close during chilly and stormy weather. When the weather warms and the sun comes out, they open wider. Often you will see a completely different flower shape and color.
• To best care for your bulbs, the leaves MUST be left alone until they are yellow. This is because the foliage manufactures the food that is being stored in the bulb for NEXT year's flower. Bulbs are actually a storage organ that helps the plant inside survive dormant periods.
• Sprinkle the seeds of wallflowers or Forget-Me-Not's over your bulb planting in the fall. These fast growing plants will cover the leaves of the bulbs once the flower is gone in the spring.

top of page

Fun Facts

• Our tulip mix started as a few trays of unidentified bulbs. Over the years we have added to this mix from forced bulbs, inadvertently mixing varieties at planting and harvest or just small lots we have discontinued. Most tulip bulbs look very similar and it is usually impossible to tell the varieties apart until they bloom.
• Tulip bulbs are sized by their caliber or the measurement of the bulbs circumference. All our tulips are 12-14 centimeters around except for our landscape special and some of the species tulips.
• We dig our tulips every year and change fields. We actually rotate all our crops using cover crops as much as possible on our farm. This helps with disease, insect, weed and erosion control. In your garden you should try to do the same by not replanting tulips in exactly the same place you dug them.
• We plant our bulbs in raised rows in the field to ensure they have proper drainage. We have had the unfortunate experience of losing many a tulip planted in a low swail during a wet year. In your own yard if you know you have a wet area, avoid planting bulbs in it.
• All our tulips are planted in the fields in nylon netting. We purchased three machines from Holland to plant and dig the bulbs. In the fall, one machine plants the tulips through a tube holding a net. At digging, another machine lifts the nets out of the ground and then a different machine picks the nets. This system can dig the bulbs faster, leaves fewer bulbs in the field and takes almost no soil out of the field.
• After picking our tulips in the field, they are taken to our barn where they are washed, immediately wrapped in clear cello to protect the flowers then placed upright in trays. The flowers are quickly moved into cold storage (33°F) and placed in a container with water. These steps are important in lengthening the life of the flower.
• All parts of tulips are edible and the bulb can be substituted for onions (although they are a little more expensive and less flavorful). The petals have little taste but can be used to garnish a dish, chop a few petals and throw them in a salad, sugar them to decorate a cake or use the entire flower for a fruit bowl, pinching out the pistil and stamen in the middle.
• According to early Persians where tulips are native; Red tulips were a declaration of love, Yellow tulips meant hopeless love, Variegated tulips meant the recipient had beautiful eyes, Tulips with a black center symbolized a heart burnt by love.
• In 1945 toward the end of World War II, the citizens of Holland were reduced to eating tulip bulbs in the infamous "hunger winter".
• Tulips are found in the wild in N. Africa, Southern Italy, Southern France, Turkey, China, Japan and Korea. All at an average latitude of 40 degrees.