Hello and Welcome to the Farm in January!
Fringed Tulip
Well that’s what I would be saying if I could invite you all over for a glass of champagne to toast goodbye to that dumpster fire of a year and big ol’ “Hey good lookin, how you doin’?” to 2021. This newsletter has been an idea I’ve been trying to tackle since I started my farm in 2017. This year I have set my intentions to keep this going.
So, Let’s Dig In!
Bulb planting, you're not too late!
We just tucked the last 800 tulips, 500 specialty narcissus, 3rd planting of 300 ranunculus and 1400 iris into their dirt homes this New Year weekend. We’re a little late this year planting the tulips as they got here from the wholesale company later than normal due to COVID delays but that doesn’t mean you can’t still plant them for gorgeous blooms in your own landscape. Bulbs are my absolute favorite thing to grow because they are almost impossible to mess up. They know what they are doing and have evolved to need nearly no care at all, just pop them in the ground and watch them come up in the spring! There are a few things you can do to have better success though.
Start with good soil! This is rule number one of growing anything really. We grow our bulbs a little differently for harvesting but we still start with a nice healthy soil, a good organic compost and a small helping of organic bulb fertilizer. We honestly aren’t dedicated to anyone brand so just about anything you pick up at your local garden center will do.
Plant them pointy end up! This might be intuitive for some but sometimes bulbs can look a little like aliens and figuring out what direction is up can be a bit tricky. Tulips grow their roots from the bottom flat side of the bulb so that should go down.
Spacing. Tulips can be spread out for little pops of color all over your garden, placed in pots or raised beds. Just make sure the soil can drain, tulips can rot if they sit in water for long periods of time. You can also pack tulips in right next to each other like we do here on the farm. We like to say it’s like putting them in egg cartons. For small farms we need to maximize all the space we can!
Plant them 3-4 inches below the surface and cover them up. They like some sun but do well in shaded areas too.
Sit back and watch them grow! Tulips have varying bloom times that are usually listed on the bag. They are classified as either Early, Mid or Late season. In our zone 9b you can expect the early varieties to bloom late February and then the others to follow until about April.
Let the greens die before cutting them back!!! This is probably the most important rule if you want the bulbs to flower again the next year. You can cut the flowers to bring inside but make sure you leave as many of the green leaves as possible on the plant. The bulb uses the energy from the greens and sucks those back in to plump up the bulb for the next years growth. Once the greens have turned brown and dried out you can clear them away and plant annuals over the same spot. In cut flower production we plant new bulbs every year and harvest the entire plant, bulb and all. We do this because we want the maximum stem length and usually there is a good 3-4 inches of stem hanging out below the surface level of the dirt.
If you have any more questions feel free to reach out! And if you didn’t get around to planting any of your own you know where to get them! We will have hundreds this spring and still have plenty of space left in all our subscription CSA. Just click the “Flower CSA” tab, fill out the info for the type of subscription you want, give us the delivery address and ask any other questions you might have!
Happy Planting and Planning!