VALENTINE'S WEEK 2

BOUQUET INGREDIENTS

tulips "Salmon Van Eijk," "Palmyra," and "Lambada;" anemone

This week we completed our first big field planting of the season. We aim to get all of our field-planted hardy annuals in the ground around the first of April, and then give ourselves (and our backs) a break from planting until our tender annuals are planted around the first of May. The flowers we planted out this week are the flowers we'll be harvesting in June and July (maybe some overachievers in late May if we're lucky!). After our bulb crops, we rely on our high tunnel plantings to fill the gap before field-planted flowers are ready.

Tulips are known to be a risky crop for flower farmers. In last week's newsletter I shared that we lost our earliest tulips to cold damage, but this is just one of many things that can go wrong when growing tulips. On top of these risks, tulips are grown for cut flowers much differently than they're grown for landscaping or home gardens. When we harvest tulips for cut flowers, we dig the entire bulb out. This allows us the longest stem length for the highest quality cut flower, but even if we left the bulbs in ground, they wouldn't reliably perennialize like they sometimes do in landscapes or home gardens. In order to harvest the flower we also take all of the plant's foliage, leaving it no way to photosynthesize and renew the bulb's energy stores for next year. This makes tulips what we call a "one and done" flower -- for each bulb we purchase we can only hope to harvest one flower, and anything going wrong means a complete loss.

Despite these risks, I just can't get enough of them! There is enormous variety of form and color amongst tulips bred for cut flowers, and this week you'll be receiving three different tulip forms: a classic pink single (Salmon Van Eijk), a lavish burgundy double (Palmyra), and a whimsical coral fringe (Lambada). Enjoy your blooms and the rest of your week!