Ep.102: Forcing Tulips for Winter Blooms with The Tulip Workshop

Most of us think of tulips as a spring flower. Emily von Trapp and Linda D'Arco built their businesses on proving otherwise.

Emily grows 200,000 tulips a year in Waitsfield, Vermont, all of them in crates, in soil, blooming in the dead of a Vermont winter. Her first stems come around January 7th. Linda grows in Jay, New York, up in the Adirondacks. She forces hers hydroponically, and she started in the basement of a little farmhouse.

They met in a Facebook group. Linda saw Emily's photo of tulips blooming in January and asked what the magic was. Then she talked Emily into teaching it. Today they run The Tulip Workshop together.

In this episode we get into:

* What forcing actually is, explained for farmers and backyard gardeners both

* What 5C and 9C mean, and why the variety matters as much as the number

* Soil versus hydroponic, from two growers who each chose differently

* The three mistakes that cost people their crop

* Why your bulb order got canceled this fall, from someone who imports them

If you have bulbs showing up at your door this month, this episode is for you.

ABOUT OUR GUESTS

Emily von Trapp grows flowers in Waitsfield, Vermont, on land her family has farmed for three generations. Her grandparents bought it as a dairy farm in the late 1950s, and her parents ran a retail nursery there for 42 years. She was selling bouquets at the local farmers market by the time she was twelve. Today she grows around 200,000 tulips a year for a winter CSA with 350 members across 13 pickup sites, plus up to 15 markets and shops throughout Central Vermont. Her tulips run January through June. Her lilies run April through January.