In Persia, to give a red tulip was to declare your love. The black center of the red tulip was said to represent the lover's heart, burned to a coal by love's passion. To give a yellow tulip was to declare your love hopelessly and utterly.
If I am madly in love and it’s spring, this is no problem since everyone knows springtime is traditionally tulip time. However, the heart knows no season and people fall in love year round. How then, to give your love a bouquet of stunning tulips as a symbol of your affection in mid-October?
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| Perfect for Fall, our "World's Favorite" variety. |
Au contraire, mes amants tulipes.
Enter Sun Valley’s Fall Tulip Program. We plan ahead to offer classic tulip varieties year round, especially in the fall and holiday times, when tulips are as rare as true love itself. How do we work this magic? What kind of voodoo are we practicing to bring a huge variety of high quality, colorful tulips to market? No magic, no voodoo. Just a bunch of innovative tulip lovers who know how to trick nature, ever so slightly.
Historically, the Dutch found a great climate for tulips in New Zealand, this was to grow them for markets in Australia and other regions of the southern hemisphere with a traditional spring harvest. Since the seasons are reversed down under, this is where the opportunity grew to offer tulips in the fall for the northern hemisphere. New Zealand is known primarily for their sheep, dairy production and of course, as the backdrop to the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. New Zealand also produces a fair amount of tulips, and luckily at Sun Valley we are very close with some of these Kiwis.
Sun Valley purchases bulbs for our fall tulips in New Zealand and they ship by boat to Oakland, where they get loaded on a truck and brought north to Humboldt County. We have worked with our partners in New Zealand to ensure the perfect fall color mix. When we first started producing southern hemisphere tulips, we found that we couldn't get the fall colors we needed, such as the warm oranges and rich reds. We took the initiative, and sent bulbs south to help our partners create the seasonal varieties and colors needed to satisfy our customers.
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| Bulbs waiting to be planted in soil, and our tulip grower Antoon Volwater inspects the development of a bulb. |
They arrive in springtime on huge pallets, then we check for the proper bulb development. Next we plant these in soil, staying true to Sun Valley’s mantra that “Soil Grown” tulips offer the best color, size, vase life and overall quality. Once the bulbs are in the soil, we place them in the “rooting cooler.” This environment simulates early spring with a temperature hovering in the mid 40’s F and we add a lot of moisture to the air to mimic nature. As the roots start to climb out of the bottom of the crate, we know they are getting established.
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| Roots growing out of the bottom of the soil crate, and the tiny beginnings of a tulip. |
As roots form and a greenish yellow sprout starts to poke up from the soil, we move them to a much colder environment, closer to 32 degrees F. This colder cooler arrests their development and creates a happy hibernation with bulbs full of kinetic energy, waiting to go.
Having the coolers full of these tulips gives us amazing control. With great accuracy we can provide the colors and varieties our customers need. We also bring them out into the greenhouse in a staggered rotation that allows us to offer these tulips throughout the season, with no lapses in production.
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| Southern Hemisphere Ad Rem tulips that have been in the green house only 1 day, and the beautiful result. |
Just down the road from the farm, some industrious farmers have a corn maze and a pumpkin patch, all those oranges and browns of fall meeting among gourds and scarecrows. We on the other hand, are surrounded by the feeling of spring as much as we desire. Strolling through the greenhouses it is tough to know what season it really is. Offering such classic tulip varieties as Il de France, Ad Rem and Leen van der Mark Sun Valley is able to Create a World of Color even as the rest of the northern hemisphere's colors fade with in Autumn.
Eddie Vedder of the seminal rock band Pearl Jam wrote, "Hearts and thoughts they fade, fade away."
Perhaps he should have given our fall tulips instead?
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