Winter Tulips

It was always crazy to me that the majority of the flowers sold during one of the top flower holidays (Valentine’s Day) had to be internationally flown in for most of the northern hemisphere!

In early 2022, I invested in taking The Tulip Workshop to learn how to force tulips in the winter and visited the farm of Emily von Trapp up in Vermont. She forces over 200,000 tulips in the winter season and it was eye opening to see the impact that one local farm could have on a community in providing locally, sustainably grown blooms.

In our 1st year of winter forcing in 2023 we were able to grow about 300-400 tulips every 6 weeks. We grew a total of 1500 tulips between December and March!

In 2024, we are looking to triple this amount. At the minimum, we hope to grow at least 8000 tulips between December and March and provide our community and designers with locally grown florals during Valentine’s Day — all without a greenhouse!

sustainably & locally grown

Why Hydroponics?

All of our winter tulips are grown hydroponically. Unlike other hydroponics, tulips only need water and nothing else! No artificial liquid fertilizers or chemicals are needed. Everything the tulip will need to grow comes from the bulb since we treat them as annuals.

This allows us to avoid using peat as is the case for most soil crate forced tulips.

Naturally Temp Controlled Environment

One thing we wanted to avoid was the need to provide supplemental heating (or cooling) to winter forcing tulips. Our basement naturally stays at 60F, which makes it the perfect environment to grow tulips! Greenhouses are typically supplementing with propane to grow.

The only additional inputs we need to add are the energy efficient LED shop lights. Because we do have a field mice problem, we have created what we affectionately call our “mouse fortress” to keep the critters out! In this space alone, we can grow around 2,600 tulips in a single succession (6 weeks)!

Why is local better?

  • Better Vase Life = Longer Enjoyment

    Locally grown flowers are generally harvested at a much closer time to sale. They do not need to go through days of shipping and are handled minimally. With proper care, we expect our tulips to last +10 days for our customers

    Learn more about how to take care of your tulips to maximize their vase life here!

  • Lower Carbon Footprint & Chemicals

    Our tulips travel just miles from where they are grown to the customer’s hands. When flowers are transported internationally, not only are they typically flown but they also need to be refrigerated. Then they need to be sprayed with chemicals to meet USDA pest requirements. Our hands touch those chemicals whenever we handle flowers grown abroad!