Why We're Not Growing Tulips Anymore
Our own-grown tulip bouquets.
Updated January 20, 2024
Tulips are a common flower for cut flower growers to have blooming in our fields every Spring. Tulips are one of the earliest flowers to emerge, right after their other spring bulb pals, Narcissus, Hyacinth, Fritillaria and Muscari, among others. Customers also love them— it’s not hard to sell a bunch of gorgeous tulips to both wholesale and retail outlets. So why would we decide to cut tulips out of our growing plan on our cut flower farm?
Related: Flowers We No Longer Grow on Our Farm, Part 1
We are no longer growing tulips for a few reasons — specifically due to the time/effort required, money lost, and waste involved in the tulip growing process. If you’re wondering if tulips are worth growing on a flower farm, or if growing tulips is profitable, here are some of my thoughts on the topic.
fall tulip plantings interfere with other important tasks
Planting tulips year after year in the Fall is an unbelievable amount of time consuming, hard work. Tulip plantings occur around the same time as digging up dahlia tubers, which is a huge project on our farm, and dahlias take precedent over all other late fall/early winter farm tasks. During this time, we are also winterizing annual beds and cover cropping portions of our fields if the weather is mild enough for seed germination.
Tulip planting in the fall also occurs at the same time we plant other fall bulbs, such as narcissus, hyacinth, allium and peonies. These bulbs are actually perennial, which means they will come back year after year with little effort (except a few varieties of alliums). I’d much rather spend my time planting these items once and reap the benefits of many harvests to come. To be fair, narcissus and alliums cannot compete on every level with a fancy double tulip… but just wait, there’s more to be shared about this tulip growing thing.
once a tulip bloom is cut, it cannot be cut again
Will tulips come back year after year? Yes, but there is a common misconception about tulips, that they are perennial and will come back year after year with beautiful blooms for cutting. That is true for tulips that are left alone and never cut, such as in landscape plantings; however, once you cut a tulip bloom, it will produce an inferior bloom the following year. So, when growing tulips for cut flower production, the bulbs must be removed from the ground and replaced with brand new bulbs every single year.
There’s another catch with growing tulips. You cannot plant tulips in the same spot year after year or they will develop a disease known as “tulip fire.” Tulip fire is devastating to flower production and once its present in your soil, there is absolutely no getting rid of it.
Related: How to Fix Soil After Using Miracle-Gro and Other Chemical Fertilizers
Hardware cloth surrounds tulip bed.
voles, squirrels and other rodents eat tulip bulbs
Tulip bulbs are irresistible to voles and squirrels. If you have rodent pressure on your property, you must take extra measures to prevent voles from eating your tulip bulbs. Otherwise, these voracious animals will spend all winter consuming the bulbs and all of your time and money will be wasted. In Fall 2022, we planted tulips on the flower farm (which was our last tulip planting!) and we lined the bulb trench completely from top to bottom with hardware cloth and secured it together with zip ties. The hardware cloth worked because it prevented a physical barrier for keeping the voles out, but let me tell you, it was a lot of extra work and extra money.
When you have vole pressure like we do, consider planting fall bulbs that repel voles: Narcissus, Hyacinth, Allium and Peonies are all disgusting to voles. They want nothing to do with any of these bulbs. There has been only one variety of Narcissus the voles ate in entirety and it was called “Peach Cobbler.” This I actually find more amusing than irritating.
tulip fire is a problem, and your bulbs may come with it already
Last year, I lost 50% of my tulip bulbs before they ever had a chance to flower because they were all shipped with tulip fire disease. That is, half of the tulips never bloomed and green growth was stunted, or never even came up. Because of diseased bulbs, I lost a lot of money on the tulip crop and it was due to a factor completely out of my control. I am not willing to risk losing money that way again! I was able to get some money back from the supplier for the diseased bulbs, but the time, planting and planning that went into it was a loss. Plus, we didn’t have those flowers to sell.
Only four Queensland tulips bloomed — all the rest succumbed to tulip fire.
specialty Tulip bulbs are expensive
In my opinion (and of course this will differ from other growers), there is no point in growing common, single petaled tulips. Anyone can buy these tulips at a grocery store, and florists can source them cheaply from a floral distributor. The minimum price we ask for wholesale tulips is $2 per stem (retail is $3-4 per stem). We’ll never get that return by growing common landscape-looking tulips. That said, the specialty bulbs cost more to buy — double-flowered “peony”, fringed, “ice cream” tulips, etc are all going to cost way more to buy in than the cheap single tulip bulbs, hence the availability and price differentiation of the end product.
Related:
Many cut flower farmers grow tulips to have early flowers to get their season going, and they also grow tulips to sell flowers for Mother’s Day. Personally, I think there are a number of easier cut flower choices that fit the bill than tulips, that bloom around the same time, including: narcissus, hyacinths, and a number of flowering perennial shrubs that are always in bloom around Mother’s Day (such as bridal wreath spirea, forsythia, ninebark).
Additionally, every growing season is different and it’s hard to predict exactly when tulips are going to bloom and if they’re even going to bloom on time for your Mother’s Day needs. In 2023, we had a warm spring and my tulips emerged weeks prior to Mother’s Day. Tulips, of course, can be dry stored in the cooler for weeks on end and sold later. But my point is, the harvest timing is increasingly unpredictable as our climate and seasons are rapidly changing.
Related: How to Grow Lisianthus
Columbus was a gorgeous harvest.
we lose money growing tulips
While we lose money growing tulips, a lot of other growers make money, so I am not here to say it’s impossible to profit off tulips. You absolutely can profit off tulips — but in order to do so, you better have a good planting system, experience no loss to voles/squirrels nor tulip fire, and sell every single stem (and LOTS of stems) at a premium price.
The growers who profit off tulips are growing into the 10,000’s of tulips every year. When you’re selling in a higher quantity, your business is able to absorb some of the losses described. If you do grow tulips, I encourage you to track your time/labor cost for planting in the fall, along with all of the materials involved. Many people grow tulips in raised beds that require wood, hardware and soil/compost to fill — and remember, that soil must be replaced at least every two years. I’d also highly suggest using hardware cloth to keep voles out, or sprinkle cayenne pepper on every single tulip bulb if you have a squirrel problem.
Tulip and Narcissus harvest.
final thoughts on growing tulips for profit
I wanted to share my thoughts on growing tulips here because as so many people are currently getting into cut flower farming, I see a lot of misguided decision making when it comes to WHAT people want to grow. It’s entirely too easy to be lured in and literally seduced by some of these flowers — tulips, especially. I’ve been there. Catalogs fly into our mailboxes and wholesale offerings flood our email inboxes, all displaying the most gorgeous photos of puffy, fluffy tulips (among 1,000 other offerings). You feel like you need all of it, or you’ll be seriously missing out, or not a real cut flower grower if you don’t have tulips in the spring.
Related: 10 Things This Flower Farmer Loves Having in the Field
I call Bullshit and encourage you to look at your numbers when you’re deciding what to grow. Maybe tulips will work for you… they don’t for us. This was just our experience. Happy growing!
rest in peace, tulips…
fran parrish
