Topping tulips
Anna Paulowna, 25 may 2015 – An employee of contractor Vermaire Breezand tops the last parcel with white tulips (Tulipa ‘Ice Wing’) from grower De Goede at Anna Paulowna. During the Whitsun weekend the last of a total of 10,000 hectares bulb were headed.
A topping machine mowed the hundreds of thousands of tulips and thereby remove only the flowers from the stem (also known als topping the tulips or heading the tulips). The flowers that remain are topped by hand. Topping ensures that the tulip puts no energy in bloom anymore. After topping the energy goes into the growing of the bulbs. The headed flowers are considered waste. (Got a lot of questions about this on the email – long time ago people were making flower guirlandes from this to sell to the tourists)
The bulbs, which are still in the ground, are harvested from July and are then cleaned, peeled and sold. The Koninklijke Algemeene Vereeniging voor Bloembollencultuur (KAVB) expects, partly due to the cold spring of 2015, high-quality tulip bulbs are harvested this year. Tulipa ‘Ice Wing is a new tulip and for the first time available to plants in the gardens around the world this autumn.
Photocredit: VidiPhoto
Interested in Topping tulips? We wrote another blogpost about topping Tulips last year and it includes a video how the tulips are topped.
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