Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Bouquet Tulips - Lucky New Garden Trend?

Did you know that your garden may have the luck of the Dutch with bouquet tulips? Just what does that mean? Good things come in fours. Think of a four leaf clover. Do you know how lucky you are to find a four-leaf clover? Why you would have to have the luck of the Irish!

According to Wikipedia, there are 10,000 three-leaf clovers for every four-leaf one. If you have to examine 10,000 clovers to find a four-leaf clover, that would take you quite a long time. When - and if - you did find that four-leaf clover, you would be fortunate indeed. Like finding a pot of gold at the end of the Rainbow.

So what does this have to do with the luck of the Dutch? When something is uncommon or rare, it is considered good favor, almost like winning the lottery. Most of today's tulip bulbs are imported directly from growers in the Netherlands by distributors.

A modern garden trend is planting multiple-blossom bouquet tulips. Some of these varieties have four flowers on one tulip plant. How lucky are you when you find one? Discovering two blossom and three blossom tulips is a surprise in the garden, as well. You would have to look in a lot of tulip gardens before you ever saw one. But they do exist.

Just so you know, a common tulip plant yields one flower per bulb. You plant one bulb which forms one tulip plant, grows into one bud and blossoms into one tulip flower. That is the way it has been for hundreds of years. In hundreds of thousands of gardens around the world. When you spot any of these beauties growing in the wild, you have just found a "bouquet on a stem" that is the envy of any tulip arrangement you place into a vase.

Today, with modern science of hybrids, you can buy and plant bouquet tulip bulbs that grow two, three, four, five and even six shoots for every tulip plant. Each shoot yields a colorful tulip blossom. The more blossoms one tulip plant has, the smaller each blossom is. Bouquet tulips come in orange, red and yellow varieties.

Bouquet tulips make excellent tulip arrangements of cut flowers. Make sure to cut the main stem with a sharp knife at an angle. Don't use scissors to cut the stem. Using scissors will pinch the stem and the tulip flowers will not be able to draw water to keep them alive. When you cut the tulip plant stem at an angle, you are allowing the plant to drink more water. It's like using a larger straw in a soft drink.

Put two or three stems in a vase and you have a beautiful bouquet of tulips greeting you in your house. For example, if you had three tulip plants of four blossoms each, you could make a cutting of all three tulip stalks that you put into one vase. That would be a dozen compact tulip flowers in one arrangement. Cut tulips in a vase can last between four and seven days. When your neighbors, friends, or family visit, just think of how amazed people will be to see these unique and unusual gorgeous bouquet tulips on your table.

Dave Pipitone is a lucky tulip gardener. He found a four-blossom orange bouquet tulip. For see pictures and learn more information on four blossom bouquet tulips, visit http://www.bouquet-tulips.com

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