- [Announcer] J Schwanke's Life in Bloom is brought to you by Albertson's Companies.

With additional support from the following companies.

The Ball Horticultural Company, Cal Flowers, Design Master Colortool, Golden Flowers, Sunshine Bouquet, and TheRibbonRoll.com.

(joyful music) - Today on Life in Bloom we're talking tulips.

We'll visit North America's largest tulip festival and learn about a bit about the history of their treasured bulbs.

I'll create easy to make arrangements with this beautiful flower and even show you tulip inspired recipes.

(happy music) I'm J Schwanke, welcome to Life in Bloom.

Flowers are the music of the ground, from Earth's lips spoken without sound.

Tulips are a sure sign of spring.

Their long stems and bright pops of color feel like a hard won victory after the many months of winter.

Tulips have a long and storied past.

Some of which, we'll discuss today.

Previously, tulips were only available in the spring.

But nowadays, tulips are available for your enjoyment in your garden or your home all year long.

Tulipomania was a period in Dutch history where the price of tulip bulbs skyrocketed.

At the peak of tulipomania, in March 1637, some single tulip bulbs sold for more than 10 times the annual income of a skilled craftsman.

It is generally considered the first recorded speculative bubble.

At one point, 12 acres of land were offered for a single Semper Augustus bulb.

One of the reasons the prices went up so much was that the bulbs were infected with a tulip specific virus.

The mosaic virus, also known as the tulip breaking virus, since it breaks the petal into two or more colors.

These exotic looking tulips could only be reproduced by offsets, not seeds.

And since these tulips were rare and highly coveted, they became outrageously expensive.

Goods allegedly exchanged for a single bulb of the Viceroy, four fat oxen, eight fat swine, 12 fat sheep, two tons of butter, a thousand pounds of cheese.

(joyful music) During my visit to Tulip Time in Holland, Michigan, I got the opportunity to talk with Ad.

This man truly says it with flowers.

- The Tulip Time Festival, well Tulip Time is a special time of the year for Holland, Michigan.

It's a huge festival.

It's the time of the year after a long winter in Michigan, people are ready to get out and see flowers.

It's a crazy but fun, hectic, time of the year and we absolutely love it.

- The festival started back in 1929 with Lida Rogers, who was a biology teacher.

She wanted to plant some tulips in the city, so she did and it became a festival that has grown over the last 82 years.

- [J] How many tulips are actually blooming at the festival?

- Six million tulips typically are blooming the week of the festival.

They're planted in October the previous year and it's weather dependent as to exactly what day they're gonna be in full bloom, but we try to plan for the festival the first or second week of May to be able to accommodate the most tulips that we can.

- It takes us about two and a half weeks to plant all our tulips.

This field behind us, we do that on one day and rest because we have to do it by hand.

It's about two weeks.

We open up as a park on the third Saturday in April and it's just like in your own yard, in your own house, it's a spring cleanup, but then a park, the spring cleanup takes a lotta people and a positive attitude to get it ready for this and that's what it takes to get Tulip Time going.

- [J] So, do the tulip bulbs take any special care?

- A tulip needs good drainage, that's very important.

If you have poor drainage, you're gonna see it.

It's gonna show, you're gonna have spots that the tulips don't produce.

We are fighting in some spots with a little bit of a disease, we're fighting some dirt that isn't the best quality, so we're always working on that part of it, which is extremely important.

You just don't stick 'em in the ground and you get beautiful, beautiful flowers.

That's why we have more people here than just me because I need horticulturists that know what they're doing, and they do know what they're doing because you can see it.

- [J] So the festival is about tulips, but it's about more than that, too.

It's about the Dutch heritage.

- Absolutely, yes, it's about culture.

Yes, it's the Dutch culture, but in a city that is growing we have different cultures, but when it's tulip time, it is about the tulips, the Dutch costumes.

It's different culture.

The Dutch express themselves with flowers.

There is a Dutch expression (speaking in foreign language) which means say it with flowers.

So it's the way you express yourself.

It's helping people in sorrow, in good or in bad times.

Growing up in the Netherlands, a flower had a different meaning than a flower over here.

When you would go visit friends, you would bring flowers.

When you wanted to express feelings in times of sorrow or in emotional times, a graduation, you name it, you always bring flowers.

I don't see that here and I hope to grow that.

That culture, that feeling.

Last year we had visitors coming from 36 different countries, and to have them here, at Windmill Island in Holland, Michigan, and see that smile on those faces when they come and see and they get out of the car and whoa, look at this.

I think that's the best compliment that they can give us, that smile.

(bright music) I think it cheers people up, it gives them that smile.

Smiles are so important and I'm working on it myself.

I love to smile more and more but that's what a flower does.

That's why they say save your flowers in the Netherlands.

It just cheers up people, that's what it does.

(upbeat music) - I love having tulips in the house.

Let's look at some easy ways to arrange them.

Generally, tulips are available in bunches, and you might pick up a bunch at the grocery store, and bring 'em home.

You might pick up a bunch that looks like this.

Notice, because of the phototropic nature of them, they're starting to head that way.

You don't really have to worry about that.

The great part about tulips is that they arrange themselves.

So if you drop them down into a vase like this, the tulips over a period of time will straighten themselves out and all be facing the exact same direction.

So that's number one.

It's really easy because tulips arrange themselves.

Number two is giving them a fresh cut.

Got a beautiful bunch like this and again, what we wanna be cautious of is taking off any foliage that's gonna fall below the water line.

Remove any leaves that might be damaged as well.

It's always a really good idea to go through and look at your flowers and sort through the bunch.

Then we take those, and I cut 'em with a locking blade knife, and drop them into a vase.

Again, those tulips are gonna grow towards the light, they're gonna open and they're gonna close.

The other simple idea is the short cut.

In that case, I cut the tulips short to place them in a shorter bowl.

These longs tulips, if kept long, would be far too long for this bowl.

So we can cut them short and drop them into the vase.

(ribbon scraping) If I add a little bita ribbon around the neck of the vase, we've got something perfect that we can keep ourselves or even give to a friend.

(cheerful music) I can't talk tulips without introducing you to my friend Lane DeVries of Sun Valley Group in Arcata, California, the largest tulip farmer in the U.S. And you're probably wondering why we're in front of a big pile of dirt.

Lane, - Hey, J, how are you?

- Do you wanna tell me about the dirt?

- This is the foundation of the tulips and the lilies of Sun Valley.

It starts off as this dirt right here.

We refer to this as humbled gold.

- Humbled gold.

- Humbled gold.

This is one of the cornerstones of Sun Valley tulips and oriental lilies.

- Alright, let's go look at it.

- Alright, perfect.

Sun Valley is known nationally for quality flowers and the fact that we have tulips on a year round basis.

- [J] How many stems of flowers do you grow annually?

- We grow in excess of roughly 80 million stems.

See, this right here is the foundation of the tulips at Sun Valley.

We plant our tulips in this soil in the fall.

We grow our tulips in coolers, essentially imitating the winter and we can do that throughout the year.

We bring the tulips into the greenhouse and it takes roughly two and a half, three weeks in the greenhouse, so this is essentially the end of a long journey from the bulb to a quality flower.

The thing about soil grow tulips, the fact that they grow slowly allows a lot of intrinsic quality into the flower and it allows for a beefier stem, a larger flower, but very important, dark foliage.

The greenness of the leaf ultimately gives the consumer a better experience in flowers.

See now this is one of the coolers that have planted tulips.

As you can see, these were planted.

This is some of the last tulips we planted, but this is our, we call it our ice program.

The whole key is to get root growths.

We keep it cooler at nine degrees Celsius, or 48 Fahrenheit, and we keep it just as long 'til we see, see this root development on the bottom?

When there's enough roots coming through, we actually start dropping the temperature.

Now we're at a point where we're actually slightly below zero Celsius, so we're right at about 31 degrees.

So we're holding 'em in a frozen condition, 'til we bring 'em into the greenhouse and that's when they do their slow growing because of the cool temperatures in Arcata.

Once we started recognizing the power and the value of southern hemisphere bulbs, that has become a very significant portion of our tulip production so now all our tulips from September first through mid December are bulbs from Chile, New Zealand.

We plant 'em here in the summer, we do the rooting, so very similar process.

You just happen to have a slow period now, but after Mother's Day, we start planting again.

- I'm just wrapping my head around this now, Lane.

You've got these tulip bulbs that perform in an opposite nature because they're from the southern hemisphere.

- Correct.

Exactly and that's why our tagline is we have spring quality in the fall.

This is the holding place before they go into the bunching line.

- Okay.

- By having these tulips with the bulb still attached, the first harvest line hasn't started yet.

Essentially these tulips are still growing.

They're just being held cold right now.

- When we cut a flower, the flower begins to die.

But because you haven't cut these off the bulb.

- This is still a growing tulip, just being cold right now.

The first harvest line doesn't start 'til that bulb is cut off at the bunching line.

So after the place where we hold the tulips, then they come to this area and this is where all the bunching takes place.

- My gosh, wow Lane.

- At the very end we have a machine that actually takes the bulb off, it cuts it off.

Then they go through a bottom belt where we do the bunching.

The bunches are put on a top belt, either in a five stem or seven or 15, depending on the customer.

Then, it puts a rubber band around the bunch.

We used to pack all our tulips flat.

And what we have found that it's so much better for the quality if they ship 'em upright because there's no geotropism and so the product stays so much better in the box.

- [J] Lane, why be a flower farmer and not a lawyer or an astronaut?

- That's a heck of a good question, as a matter of fact, my sister is a lawyer.

My brother is a judge, and I guess I became the flower grower.

I'm the flower grower in the family, continuing the family heritage.

The fact that we have four generations in flower growing.

But I love this, I love this flower growing, sticking my hands in the dirt, seeing product grow.

That to me, that's a passion I would not wanna exchange for any other profession.

I walk the greenhouse every day.

I walk through this facility three times a week.

I walk through the tulips every day, no matter what day.

Sunday morning, before I go to church, I look at tulips.

I cannot imagine not walking the greenhouse.

Flowers are important because they bring happiness.

Any time we give somebody a bunch of flowers, have you ever seen a sad face?

You almost always get a smile when you give a bunch of flowers and I think flowers have so much to offer to people as a whole in terms of happiness, in terms of good feelings.

That is just in that sense, a very good business.

A very gratifying business to be in.

(merry music) - In honor the tulips, I though we'd create a traditional Dutch punch.

Jenever is the traditional and national liquor of Amsterdam.

It's created with juniper berries and there's old and young jenever.

It's not actually about the age, but about the distilling process.

We'll use jenever in our punch today.

(liquid splashes) We'll start with three cups of jenever.

Followed by a half cup of maraschino liquer.

Then, a quarter cup of absinthe and a quarter cup of simple syrup, and bitters.

You can garnish with lemon, lime or flowers.

I thought it would be fun for us to create some lemon pinwheels using tulips.

(ice clinks) Traditional Dutch punch, cheers.

(light music) In staying with our tulip theme, we're gonna make an herbed goat cheese, but we're gonna serve it on the petals of tulips, which'll be a great presentation.

We'll start with some goat cheese, and we'll just put it into our bowl.

Then we need some fresh garlic.

One clove should do it pretty much for us.

And then I've got a mixture of herbs.

We've got some oregano, we've got a little bit of lavender, we've got a little bit of course salt.

Just gonna add that over the top, it's about three tablespoons there.

And then we're gonna cover it with some olive oil.

What we're gonna do now is we'll just mash that together.

(metal clanking) And we're gonna take a tulip blossom.

We'll break off our tulip petals.

Those look beautiful.

And then, we're just gonna place a dollop on each one of the petals.

This way we can put 'em on a plate or we can have individual serving on a place setting as well.

Our tulip petals with our herbed goat cheese is perfect as a little hors d'oeuvre for a garden party.

You wanna be sure to rinse the petals of the tulips in cold water or if you have tulips in your yard and you know they've been grown organically, they'd be perfect as well.

(cheerful music) Parrot Tulips.

These abnormal tulips are actual mutants.

And they were able to be reproduced by breeders.

Some people say that there's a virus that changes the tulip bulb inside to create the different things that we see here.

The thing I know is that I love these tulips because they are different.

They have a tendency to flop over the vase.

They have a tendency to be extra large and their stems will continue to elongate as they grow.

So trying to put a Parrot Tulip in a vase and control it is probably not in your best interest.

Much like teenagers, tulips do what they want to whenever they want to.

I'm fascinated by these fringed varieties, or this one that almost looks like flames.

They're called Parrot Tulips because the edges themselves appear to look like feathers, but they can be different and interesting like this, where the striation starts to appear on their petal.

Parrot Tulips may be cup shaped, fringed, twisted or ruffled.

They're decorated with vivid flame-like splashes, stripes or feathery markings.

Parrot Tulip flowers are available in a range of bright colors including red, violet, yellow, orange, pink, green, and near black.

Parrot Tulip flowers are huge, measuring nearly five inches acrosst on a 15 to 20 inch stem.

Parrot Tulips are a late blooming variety of tulip.

Parrot Tulips allow us to experience what nature can create.

(lively music) Today we've explored the mysterious and magical tulip.

They can arrange themselves and never fail to bring a smile to someone's face.

If you want to say it with flowers, you'll never go wrong using a tulip.

For Life in Bloom, I'm J Schwanke.

See ya next time.

- Just bolts 'em in place.

- So Lane, what's your favorite flower?

- My favorite flower is a soil grown tulip.

- Because that's the best tulip.

- That's the best tulip, absolutely.

- Humble is known for marijuana.

That's why I said humbled gold, some people might think it's something else.

- Okay, gotcha.

- That's what I was referring to.

(J laughs) 'Cause Humble is known for.

- Okay, yeah.

I'm all about flowers, not so much about plants.

- I know, I know.

The climate in which we grow our flowers.

- Whoa.

- Whoa.

So much for that close up.

- [J] J Scwanke's Life in Bloom is filmed in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

- [Announcer] J Schwanke's Life in Bloom is brought to you by Albertson's Companies.

With additional support from the following companies.

The Ball Horticultural Company, Cal Flowers, Design Master Colortool, Golden Flowers, Sunshine Bouquet, and TheRibbonRole.com.

(light music) Closed caption funding provided by Chrysal.

For everything flowers, recipes, projects and more information, visit uBloom.com.

(logo chiming) (upbeat music)