SALE! Bulbs for Valentine’s Day Blooms
An armload of Largo tulips for Valentine’s Day.
We’re offering a special this week on red varieties for Valentine’s Day bulb forcing. Customers will find crates listed at $20-$53 off per 500 bulbs.
When is the latest you can plant to have flowers for Valentine’s Day?
A standard tulip forcing timeline allows for at approximately 6 weeks from planting to bloom for properly pre-cooled bulbs. Tulips must be afforded a cool period of rooting for 2-3 weeks followed by a warmer growing period of 3 to 4 weeks.
Growers will want bulbs to have achieved their optimum cooling weeks before they are put it into the warmer growing spaces. We label our bulbs with the exact cooling completion dates for each variety, based on the date they entered their cooling chambers this fall. These dates vary by variety because tulips are harvested and brought to the supplier from different farms on different days. Each variety also has different cooling preferences. For the greatest precision, we share this information with our customers. And as a result, ABC customers are afforded the most detailed data in the industry.
Growers should taking into consideration how far ahead of Valentine’s Day they’d like to have their flowers in hand. Do you prefer to have them a full week ahead? Or maybe even 10 days? Do you need time to ship them or deliver them to florists or customers? Consider your sales window when you’re planning.
While there are many things we can control with bulb forcing, it’s never a good idea to plant to have flowers blooming in a window as small as one day. Nature simply doesn’t work like that. It’s standard for a tray of tulips to bloom over the course of a week. On the first harvest day, there may be only one or two stems that are ready. On the next, perhaps 5. On the next another 10 or 20, and so on, until the final few ripen.
We like to have our Valentine’s Day bulbs planted and starting to root around mid December if we’re growing cooler closer to 60F and around the 3rd-4th week of December if our space allows for warmer growing around 70F.
For more information:
Many other factors affect the success or failure of tulip forcing programs. We recommend The Tulip Workshop program for any growers who are serious about producing flowers for their businesses. The Tulip Workshop has helped hundreds of growers around the world extend their tulip seasons and avoid making costly mistakes.