Category: Tulips

 

When I was a child, people had tulips in their gardens that returned every spring to everyone’s delight. Is there anyone who doesn’t love a tulip? Then about 30 years ago I spoke to a landscaper who told me tulips were treated as annuals to be sure they bloomed the next spring. This didn’t make sense to me who always thought of tulips as perennials. Why should a plant that I was used to seeing each spring as perennials now have to be planted as annuals? Was this becoming a racket to make people buy tulip bulbs every fall?

I knew that tulips were native to the dry rocky soils of Turkey where they are its national flower. Were we getting too much rain these days that made the tulips rot in the ground? We may be getting more rain these days, but the tulip bulbs we plant, esp. the big hybrid ones, come from the farms in the Netherlands where they have as much rain as many parts of the US has. So the wetness of the soil should not be the cause.

The other day, I attended a lecture given by a lady who runs the seed and bulb company Harvesting History. I asked her what has happened to tulip bulbs that they have to be planted annually. She said the reason is that today the growers of tulip bulbs clone the plants. I guess they do this to insure the customer that he or she will be getting what was ordered. But cloning weakens the bulb and therefore it is not as strong as an un-cloned bulb. A cloned bulb will not return reliably every year. She said scientists are working on this problem.

Continue reading “Do tulips have to be planted annually?”

Tulipmania by The Great Photographicon

Almost all the gardeners that I know love getting new plants for their garden. But this compulsion to buy more unusual plants is nothing when compared to what happened in Holland in the 1600s.

Tulip mania was what they called what was happening in Holland. The Dutch had recently learned about the beautiful tulip flower which was unlike anything they had ever seen before.The Dutch were not the first to be smitten by the tulip. Long before the tulip was introduced in Europe, in Bavaria in 1559, the flower had enchanted the Persians and bewitched the rulers of the Ottoman Empire. But the Dutch reaction was so much more intense. Flower paintings became extremely popular in the 1630s and 1640s. Such paintings were cheaper than real bouquets – and kept longer!  See here.  They were so enamored with the tulip flower that the Dutch were bidding extraordinarily high levels for the bulbs and speculating on them. Prices of bulbs sold for more than 10 times the annual income of a skilled craftsman.  One person was reputed to have sold his house for 3 bulbs.

And then the market suddenly collapsed.

Continue reading “Two Books and a Musical about Tulipmania”

Red tulips at my place by Per Ola Wiberg ~ Powi

What is it about tulips that make them so special? Over the years I had felt so frustrated that I couldn’t grow tulips because the animals would eat them. I used to drive by homes that had rows of tulips and wonder why the deer ate mine but not theirs. And then the next year, their tulips, too, disappeared.

One day, I went on a tour of Derek Fell’s garden. Derek Fell is a famous photographer of gardens and flowers among other subjects.  See here. He had opened his property for tours. Derek Fell lives in deer country yet when I visited he had a huge display garden filled with tulips. There was no fence around the entire property, just a low fence around the tulips. I hope my memory serves me about the fence. But a low fence would never keep deer out of a tulip bed. I was amazed. That was when he told me that he used Liquid Fence as a deer and rabbit repellent. It was then and there that I became a believer and started using Liquid Fence on all my plants. And last year, I was rewarded with the tulips I planted the previous fall. They all produced beautiful flowers. Not knowing what to expect, I had bought the cheapest small bulbs that year so that I would not waste money if they were eaten. Wonder of wonder. Here I had tulips flowering once again after a hiatus of at least 30 years. I could not be happier.

Continue reading “How to Protect Tulips from Deer”