Inside the Flower Bulb Industry
Does it seem like the wholesale bulb industry is a bit of a foggy mystery? Ever wonder how it all works? Here’s a quick primer about the process and people involved in bringing us all the beautiful products that make our farms’ offerings special.
Guide to the Flower Bulb Industry:
A large number of people play a role in bringing the flower bulbs we all use for cut flower production to the marketplace. It’s an impressive tight network of businesses that have been operating in the same spheres for generations. Companies whose names end with “en Zonen” have “and sons” in their ownership. “Gebr” is an abbreviation of gebroeders and it means “brothers”. We often see both terms in the names of bulb industry companies.
Hybridizers are at the beginning of the supply chain. To me, their job is the most magical. They determine which varieties will be bred together to form new varieties. They are responsible for taking on and responding to industry trends with their developments. They manually cross flowers and grow out their seeds to search for interesting developments. Every plant they work with in this manner is unique. It takes about 18 months to grow a lily from seed to flower, and even more time to get a larger bulb and see the full potential of the plant. Tulips can take about 7 years to go from seed to flower. Varieties that make the grade are sent for tissue culture propagation in a lab for multiplication.
Tissue culture scientists take a single bulb or plant of interest and multiply it into about 10,000 new bulbs/plants in a single year. That number far exceeds the quantity of bulbs that could be produced through the scales or bulblets (division of a flower bulb). Tissue culture propagation happens in controlled environments in labs (but there is a whole world of hobbyists who do it in their homes, too). Tiny sections of young plant materials are sequestered in petri dishes with optimal conditions for growth and stimulants to promote development. It is described as very tedious work. Once the tiny plants begin to grow they need to be divided and moved into larger containers for growing on. Eventually, the materials are returned to the breeder for growing on into bulbs that can be sold with patent rights to farmers.
Bulb farmers bulb farmers purchase rights to grow newly patented flower varieties. They receive a certain quantity of bulbs with their purchase and must multiply the bulbs through division to increase their stock over several years in preparation for either cut flower production or bulb sales. Its during this period of time that we start to be introduced to new varieties of flowers that we can’t yet purchase in bulb form for our own businesses. The farmers must increase their stock to a point where they have the quantities they’d like to be able to sell in bulb sizes that will produce a desirable cut flower.
Bulb brokers work with bulb farmers to help them bring their bulbs to the global marketplace. They collect orders from wholesale distributors around the world and broker deals with the farmers who own the bulbs. Brokers are tasked with managing relationships with many different farmers, understanding the specific varieties they grow, and dealing with the tasks of preparing the products for export. Exporting tasks include bulb/root cleaning procedures, cold storage requirements, phytosanitary inspections, and international shipping coordination. Bulb brokers also work to manage the fall out from the crop failures the bulb farmers sometimes experience. When some varieties are no longer available, a good bulb broker will work to find replacement products for their wholesale distributor customers.
Wholesale Distributors (like us!) work with customers (flower farms) nationwide to distribute bulbs in smaller quantities based on each business’s needs. Wholesale distributors offer bulbs for sale in bulk at prices that allow farmers to run profitable businesses. When certain varieties are not available after summer bulb harvests, a good wholesale distributor will offer optional substitutions to their buyers and coordinate the order changes. Wholesale distributors must be aware of state to state importing/exporting expectations and help to coordinate state and federal phytosanitary inspections as required. Wholesale distributors ensure that proper shipping procedures are followed to protect bulb/root health and coordinate box/freight shipments for their customers.
So that’s how it works in a nutshell! So many people and so much hard work goes into all of the bulbs and plants we have the pleasure of growing as flower farmers. It’s pretty amazing to trace the path of a new variety from the earliest selection of the parent plants all the way to our fields and gardens. Have a question? Let us know in the comments below.
Cheers!
-The Team at Ampersand Bulb Co.