Tulip Saga, Part 2: How to...

It is a little funny for me to be writing a post on how to grow tulips because full disclosure, I bought my tulips this year as budding bulbs already.

Day 1 -- I cheated

In all honesty, Southern California isn't the greatest place for tulips because the bulbs require a good solid winter chill in order to bloom, and that is one thing we do not have -- winter chills.  (I am not sad).  So this being my first attempt with tulips, I wanted to see if they would actually grow, what kind of care they needed, etc.  As you saw last week, they did!  Will I be trying tulips again?  Most definitely yes. 

Little buds and blooms, how cute!

So, from the beginning, here's what to do:

1.  Faking a winter chill:
If you buy bulbs -- and there is good reason to because there are so many more beautiful varieties out there -- you will need to trick your tulip into thinking it is somewhere where tulips belong, like Holland (or Washington State -- who knew?  Though of note, the family in charge of these tulip company are also Dutch).
How?  Your lettuce drawer in your refrigerator will do just the trick.  Refrigerate in a brown bag for 6 weeks prior to planting.  Avoid putting the bulbs near ripening fruit that emits ethylene (like apples) and if your crisper freezes things like ours does, keep it somewhere else in the fridge -- you do not want your bulbs to freeze.

2.  Planting:
If you live on the coast like I do, you will want to plant your bulbs around the holidays.  Ideally, you can find a spot that is shady during December/January and then sunny in February when your tulips are likely to start blooming.  
How?  Well, if you have pots, you can move them, or if your bulbs are in the ground, then you can cover them.  Why?  The shade will help tulips will put down better roots and full sun will prevent the flowers from leaning toward the sun when they've bloomed.
As for soil, well-draining soil is best.  If you've grown tulips in the same spot/pot previously, either replace the soil or plant your bulbs elsewhere.  Plant them a couple times deeper than they are wide and water daily.  Fertilizing with nitrogen based plant food before bloom is recommended, particularly if you plan on keeping your bulbs.

3.  After-care:
If you want to try to keep your bulbs for the following year, wait until the leaves wither and then dig them up (in the fall) and keep them in a cool dry place (like your garage) until you're ready to fake them out in the fridge again.  The problem is, this apparently doesn't always work that well -- the following blooms end up being shorter and smaller than the previous years... if they even bloom.  There are some exceptions, but the SoCal gardening sources I am using suggest buying new bulbs every year.
If you do have great success with replanting bulbs, wonderful!  At some point, as with most bulbs, they will grow big enough that you should divide them, which you should do in late summer.

4.  Trouble-shooting:
Potential pests include squirrels (they try to dig bulbs up -- this happened to me this year!  Fortunately, it gave up or failed), slugs/snails, and aphids.  You can cover your just-planted bulbs with chicken wire and there are sprays for the other slimeys and suckers.  I had a short-lived aphid issue on one of my tulips that disappeared as soon as I doused some Neem oil on.

Besides that, all there is left to do is enjoy!  

As of now, I think I will try to replant my bulbs, just to see what happens.  Right now, there's still some serious foliage going on though, and they're in a planter I would like to use for other purposes, so I will either have to plant around them or just keep on looking at the tulip leaves for awhile.

Lastly, for all my LA folk, unless you were a VERY deep sleeper, you experienced the earthquake this morning... 4.7 in the Santa Monica mountains!  As a Texas-bred girl, I realized today that I know what to do in tornados, but not in earthquakes.  So I looked up some earthquake safety tips and am sharing them here for your reading pleasure!

Sources for today's post include The Sunset Western Garden Book and Pat Welsh's Southern California Organic Gardening.

Tulip Saga, Part 1: The story of a tulip

If you know me and/or this blog, you know I love tulips.  Lots.  Because a picture is worth a thousand words, a pictorial for you, about a tulip.

2/5/14 - Infancy!

2/12/14

2/14/14 

2/17/14

2/20/14 

2/22/14 

2/26/14 - Fully mature!

2/28/14 - Ravaged by the storm

3/5/14 - And all good things come to an end.

It was my first tulip relationship. They only lasted a month, but it was a happy month for me!  Next week, I'll talk about what I learned and how to care for tulips, and I'll have a few more gratuitous close-ups.  

In the meantime, while we're on the theme of blooming flowers, I came across a gorgeous "documentary" on flowers on Netflix this week while "learning to relax".  It's actually a wordless, beautifully shot time-lapsed string of videos of blooming flowers of the sort you might see at a spa.  I found it mesmerizing and I LOVED it.  It's called Moving Art: Flowers (here is a shorter clip).  We have had daylight savings... Spring is nigh!  (March 20, 2014 to be exact!)  And you know what that means.... gearing up for gardening!

Great gardens: Keukenhof!

The Keukenhof is heavenly.  I purposely saved going to this place for my 30th birthday because I was really looking forward to it, and it was everything I had hoped and dreamed.  I will let the pictures do the talking.

Tulip fields adjacent:

And at the Keukenhof:

 

In case you couldn't guess, the red tulip background is also from the Keukenhof.  Those were my favorites -- bright red tulips about the size of little melons!

Now, should you ever want to visit, the Keukenhof gardens are in Lisse, The Netherlands, they are open for about 2 months in the spring only, and this is their website.  

Beautiful, isn't it!  "Hup, hup, hoera" for Dutch flowers!

Orchid-land!

By now, you know that I like orchids.  So this is exceptionally cool to me.  I have brought up in the past how my cousins' cousin Walter has an orchid greenhouse.  Well, the first day we arrived in Holland, Evan and I went to visit it again where we got another tour of the place.

The essence of what Walter does there is grow orchids for the flower.  This is in contrast to the vast majority of orchid growers who grow orchids to sell the plant.  The result is that they pay special attention to the quality of the flower when breeding (many of them were the size of grapefruits). 

One cutting from a orchid they like can produce up to 100 or so plants which start as little orchid babies and grow slowly until 3 years later it is full sized and ready to produce wholesale quality flowers.

In the greenhouse (which maintains a warm, humid environment for optimal orchid growth), they have an area for all these orchid baby plants which rotate on a schedule while they grow.  I neglected to take any pictures of these baby plants because I was too obsessed with all the flowers.

Me, obsessed with the flowers

Anyway, once the flowers are ready and they have a buyer, they cut them and put them a plastic water-filled tube at the end of the stem, box them, and put them in a cooler.  They go in cooled trucks all over the world (many of them to the US!).  This is a stressful stage for the flower, as certain things like contact with fruit, especially pears and apples, can kill them (for the scientifically minded, the fruit emits ethylene which is no good for flowers -- I grew up hearing this about roses too).  As for who buys the flowers, there's lots of buyers.  Recently, Dior put on a show with themed color rooms walled with flowers.  Walter's company supplied the orchids for the "white room."  (This picture was taken from his company facebook page).

Pretty awesome!  Anyway, my family lives in the part of Holland covered with greenhouses, all growing profuse amounts of flowers and food.  I have always loved all of the greenhouses, but this visit, I also was struck by how many orchids you see everywhere -- it seems like every Dutch person has at least one orchid plant in their house.  My grandma has a tiny 2 inch pot with a very healthy-looking orchid in it on her dining table.  So effortless!  I love it!  And it made me feel like maybe my love of orchids is also a little bit Dutch.

For those interested, here is a link to Walter's company and a few more photos for the orchid lovers.  Enjoy!

Optimism!

…does not run in my family.  Not really.  I am a “realist,” and let’s be real:  I tend to kill my plants.  There is a good gardener in there somewhere, but I am not there yet.  But as I mentioned in my first post, I am feeling quite good about this year and I feel with certainty that I will have an awesome garden.  Why?

#1.  I live in Southern California, land of sunshine.  Everything grows here.

#2.  I am half-Dutch and my grandpa (Opa!) and uncles had greenhouses and made their living growing flowers.  It’s literally in my blood and my one true destiny.  Here’s a gratuitous picture of my extended family’s baller greenhouse in Holland:

And most importantly,

#3.  This year, I bought books, really fat ones.  Boom.

Specifically, Pat Welsh’s Southern California OrganicGardening, The New Sunset Western Garden Book, and Sunset Western Garden Edibles (the last was a gift from my husband who knows me so well).  Pat Welsh’s book tells you month by month what to do, the Western Garden book is pretty much the encyclopedia of plants and a great reference tool, and the Garden Edibles book is similar but specific to edibles (obviously).  More thorough reviews will probably follow once they have aided me in growing the perfect garden this year, but so far, I am rating them very useful on the worth-having scale.

…I am pretty sure I am the next mini-Pat Welsh, Dutch ancestors be proud.