Red Makes Way For Pink

“Red isn’t doing too well, they want pinks now,” were the words of my friend Fred, who grows Tulips in the West-Friesland town Hensbroek. Tulips in the greenhouse at Borst Bloembollen in Obdam

I had promised Vlad and Pauliina that, somewhere between Valentine’s- and International Women’s Day, I would take them with me to a Tulip grower to show them what happens to most Tulips in this world. Vlad is originally from Moldova, Pauliina from Finland–which is where the second i in her name comes from, and it might surprise you, but her name is Finnish for Pauline–so they haven’t grown up in The Netherlands. They mostly know the Dutch flower bulb world from the perspective of working at Fluwel, and then it seems as if most Tulips are bought as bulbs and then planted and grown in gardens, parks, or on balconies, but this is actually quite far from the truth. The large majority of Tulips exist in the world of flower bouquets. If you want to know what Pauliina and Vlad do at Fluwel… I don’t know. They sit at their desk in the office and they’re lovely people? I’m kidding, of course, but not really: they are both IT specialists, so I actually don’t know what they do exactly, but they are like the brain surgeons of our website. Where we, the people with calluses on their hands and dirt under their nails, are way out of our depth, they remain calm and solve all of our problems while happily sipping their tea. But we were talking about growing Tulips. I do know something about that, and I also know something about photography, so I thought I would combine those two things. One of the assignments I once got during a photography course I was following had us tell a story in seven photos. We were allowed to use text, but just one sentence for every picture, which you can imagine was not easy for me. I will try that again now, because I also told you I would say something about our Dahlia assortment this week. So: Growing Tulips in Seven Photos. (We won’t count the ones you already saw, don’t worry.) Tulip bulbs are planted in these black crates, and kept in massive cold rooms for three to four months. This is necessary in order for the bulbs to believe that winter is over, and it is now time to bloom. When the Tulips are ready, they are rolled forward automatically in order to harvest the flowers. This picking machine puts the harvested Tulips on a conveyor belt, which brings them to the machine that makes bouquets. Before the Tulips end up in the bouquet-making machine, they are held upside down, gripped by two rubber bands. The next machine–which has requested to remain anonymous–cuts the bulbs from the flower. Then, the Tulips are gripped at the end of their stem by the bouquet-making machine.This machine counts out ten tulips for every little bouquet it makes. It puts an elastic band around the bunch and puts it on the conveyor belt. Five of these little bouquets are gathered together–so fifty tulips per package–and rolled into paper and put into a tub. These tubs of Tulips are then placed onto auction carts and are then wheeled back into a cold room. During the night, they are picked up. They have an appointment at the flower bulb auction in Aalsmeer at six in the morning, where they will be–you guessed it–auctioned. 

Vlad and Pauliina were very impressed by the whole situation, and it really is an impressive thing to see, especially for the first time. They were like Charlie in the Chocolate factory, looking at the way people and machines work together to get the Tulips ready. Dahlia Bumble Rumble 

But I had promised you to tell you more about the Dahlias in this newsletter. Over the next few days, the first Dahlias are going to be shipped out to our customers, so if you were among the first to order, you can expect them at your doorstep soon. Unfortunately, I sometimes get email questions from customers about disappointing results. When they tell us what happened, we then hear that they had unpacked the Dahlias right away when they arrived. Then, they kept them without any packaging or protection until late April, when they planted them. This is where the mistake was made. Dahlias can dry out, and when they do, their quality decreases dramatically. A dried-out Dahlia takes way longer to come to life, and sometimes it even dies completely. Of course, if this happens to you, we make sure you can try again with a new Dahlia. This is what you should do: Dahlia Caitlin’s Joy 

The Dahlias you receive arrive in a porous plastic bag. The material of this bag is especially made to let oxygen in, but not let moisture out. If you leave the Dahlia tubers in this bag until you plant them around the end of April/early May, they stay in great shape. If you do want to unpack them and lose the packaging, you should keep them rolled up in newspapers or towels. Do not leave them laying around naked! Make sure your Dahlias are kept in a cool space, but without any risk of frost: frost is another enemy of the Dahlia tuber. But then why do we ship the Dahlias this early, if we make a point of not shipping off our Tulips and Daffodils before you can actually plant them to counter this same exact problem? Well, this is because there are a lot of people who want to pre-grow their Dahlias. This means giving your Dahlia a little head start before she goes out into the garden. When you do that, it means that the Dahlias bloom earlier. It is very easy, really: Plant your Dahlia in a flower pot. Keep this pot in your garage or shed, somewhere it won’t encounter any frost. If you do this in March, you will see that during April, around the time you want to move them to the garden, the tubers already have roots. This is the head start I was talking about. Obviously, you do need to keep the soil in the flower pot moisturised: Then the tubers get the best chance of growing good roots beforehand. When the danger of nighttime frost has passed, you can carefully move the tubers to the garden. 

This has two main benefits. The first one is that your Dahlias will be in full bloom a good three to four weeks earlier. Secondly, and maybe more importantly, snails and slugs will be less of an enemy for the Dahlia. They are not completely safe: those slimy suckers love to nibble your Dahlia plants, and they can eat much more than you might think, but if the Dahlias have had a head start, the chances that snails and slugs will devour an entire plant is significantly smaller. 

Have a look around in our web shop, the Dahlia assortment is beautiful as ever. I’ll be going back to my Daffodils now, see you next week! 

Kind regards, 

Carlos van der Veek 

Right, the title: Red making way for pink means that pink Tulips are now overtaking reds in popularity. During Valentine’s Day, red Tulips are–unsurprisingly–at their most valuable. Now, we have International Women’s Day coming up, which will be on March 8. Then, pink flowers are always most popular. Beautiful, isn’t it?