ISHS Acta Horticulturae 109: III International Symposium on Flower Bulbs
EFFECT OF DIFFERENT GROWING METHODS IN TULIPS ON THE YIELD OF SALEABLE BULBS |
| Author: | E. Rasmussen |
| Abstract:
About 50 years ago and earlier, every bulb were planted and lifted by hand. Commonly the bulbs were planted on beds as we are doing to day, but the rows were going acros instead of along the beds, and the growers knew the number of bulbs in each row. Control of bulb disease was much more effective than now, but it cost a lot of handwork. Handwork is expensive and if you will make the work cheaper you must mechanize. The first mechanizing were to go from the spade to the plough, and before we could do so the bulbs must be planted in rows along instead of across the beds. In the first time we had 6 rows in each bed, but after we got plant and lifting machines, 4 rows per bed is more commonly. When we change from 6 to 4 rows, the yield decreased with about 10 %, but it save us a lot of handwork and we could therefore accept this decrease in the yield. In those experiments which I shall tell you about, we have tested different growing methods in tulips. First we compared growing on beds with growing on ridges, and later on growing in two other ways. Growing on ridges are coming from the Netherlands, from the flat marsh, where the ground water sometimes are too high in the wintertime. The bulbs are placed nearly in the soil surface and the soil are ridge up over it, to a normal covering lay. The rows are push together two and two, with one double row in each ridge, and two ridges take the same place as one bed. There are with other words the same number of plants on each m2, only the placing of the bulbs are different.
Figure 1. Cross section through a bed and two ridges. The bulbs were cultivated in two ways in 4 years and as you can see in table 1, we have got the best result from growing on beds. 52.000 more saleable bulbs per ha. | |
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