The crocus, anemone, narcissus and daffodil are all welcome
harbingers of spring. However, growing tulips capture the
essence of spring with bright colorful blooms that renew the
earth with promise of summer color. The best part of growing
tulips is watching them dance in the first breaths of spring.
The second best part of growing tulips is tulip care. The reason
is because once established, a tulip bed needs very little care
at all!
Tulips originated in Central Asia where they grew in the wild.
The word tulip means turban and comes from a Turkish word,
turbend. Tulips were cultivated in Turkey as early as 1,000 AD.
Today tulips are frequently associated with the Netherlands. In
August of 1593, Carolus Clusius received a gift of tulip bulbs
from his friend, Ogier Ghiselain de Busbecq, the ambassador of
Constantinople. He planted the bulbs and the spring of 1594 gave
birth to the first tulips of Holland. Clusius’s planting is
still considered the birth of the Netherlands flower bulb
business, which continues today, over 400 years later. The
colorful flowers soon became major trading commodities.
Different color strains and mutations were status symbols and in
such high demand in the 1600’s that tulips were often sold by
estimated weight, even before they were lifted from the ground.
Trading in tulip futures was dubbed as “tulpenwindhandel” (tulip
wind trade). Soon this speculative trading got out of hand and
the Dutch government introduced trade restrictions to quash it.
Growing tulips is easy. Tulips are spring flowering bulbs that
should be planted in late autumn. Tulip bulbs are an excellent
nutrient storage system that need little care besides water.
Tulips prefer a bed of sandy, slightly alkaline soil with at
least four hours of sunlight per day, but not direct sun. Today
there are over 100 species of growing tulips and many hundreds
of hybrids, primarily due to the extensive breeding programs and
tulip care that began in the late sixteenth century.
Planting tulips is as simple as growing tulips. Bulbs should be
spaced depending on the effect you want to create. The only rule
is that they shouldn’t be close enough to touch each other.
Planting depth is also easy to calculate. As a rule of thumb,
plant tulip bulbs at a depth of two to three times the height of
the bulb. The most difficult part of planting tulips is
remembering to put them root side down and pointed side up!
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