ISHS Acta Horticulturae 177: IV International Symposium on Flower Bulbs
TULIPS AS A ONE AND TWO YEAR CULTURE IN DENMARK |
| Author: | E. Rasmussen | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Abstract:
Tulips are a very labour demanding culture, and as the expenses for labour still are rising, we are seeking labour-saving ways of growing tulips. An alternative method could be to grow the smallest bulbs two years in the same land. The small bulbs do not give many saleable bulbs the first year, so maybe they could stay for two years. In that way you would save a years expenses of lifting, cleaning, grading, storing and replanting. The method has been tried in Holland partly by a private grower, Hend van Dam, Wieringerwerg, and partly at the Bulblaboratory in Lisse (Timmer, 1970 and 1973). At Henk van Dam the bulb grown for two years, gave pretty good results, but there was no control of the outcome of the first year. They had serious attacks of sickness and many bulb did not sprout at all the second year. At the Bulb-laboratory they also had problems of sickness attacks in the first experiment and the second was therefore carried out on steamed land. The Dutch trialplan was as follows:
After the first year 4 – 5 and 6 were lifted so that you could measure the growth of the first year. Afterwards number 5 and 6, after having sorted out the sick bulbs, were replanted at an area of the same size as the previous year. In this way they were put very close. From culture 4 the healthy bulbs of size 6–7 were planted with 24 bulbs per m as the year before, which is the normal distance for that size of bulbs. The results from 1 and 2 can be compared with 5 and 6 what closeness regards. The two one year cultures (5 + 6) gave more kilos than the two year cultures (1 + 2), but the two year cultures produced more saleable bulbs. The biggest outcome was harvested with the biggest outlay, and number 4 gave more than number 5. The Dutch recommend that the method is tried out in practise with different cultivares, but they emphasize that it is necessary to work with absolutely healthy material. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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