Topping the tulips

Tulips grown in natural habitat go through a life cycle to look like perennial plants. They need cold winters and hot airy dry summers.

Life of tulips start from the bulbs we plant. They bloom using energy from bulbs, they create new bulbs using remaining energy and bulb will die as it is all used up,  Planting is done in early fall. Root expanding happens in winter. Sprout starts in spring. Blooming takes place in hot summer. Disintegration starts from that time and new bulbs will be formed. They start growing by accumulating more energy from environment. The period from blooming to plant dyeing is called as grand period of growth.

Growers in Holland and Seattle dig their tulips every year and give temperature treatment to their bulbs manually and replicate what they receive in their natural region. Growers from regions with year around cold weather give temperature treatment to new bulbs. Growers from regions with year around hot weather give cooling treatment to bulbs.

Tulip growers top the tulips when they bloom fully. They do that for three reasons.

• They do not want petals of flowers falling into foilage and cause plants to rot and die before new bulbs had chance to grow.
• They want to use all energy for new bulbs to grow and avoid new seedpod consuming energy and create small late blooms.