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Forcing tulips. Cutting and storage

Continuation. For the beginning, see the articles: Forcing tulips from January to March, Varieties of tulips for forcing, Varieties of tulips for forcing in pots, Forcing tulips. Flowering acceleration techniques.

Tulips are cut in the phase of a colored bud in the morning before watering with all the leaves at the base of the stem and placed in a cool room at a temperature of + 5 + 6 ° C.

If the cut is not high enough, and in the future it is not planned to preserve the bulbs after forcing, the plants are pulled out entirely, along with the bulb. Having cut off the bottom and cleared the stem of bulbous scales, you can lengthen the cut by 5-6 cm. Today it is fashionable to put bouquets of tulips together with bulbs in transparent vases. This is not only a stylish design trick, but also a way to preserve the cut for longer.

Storage of cut tulips

There are two options for storing cut tulips - dry and in water. If long-term storage is required, the first should be preferred. In both cases, the plants continue to grow, so you need to leave space when laying the cut in boxes.

Dry storage: Cut flowers are wrapped in paper (10-50 pcs.) And placed in a dark refrigerator without water at a temperature of + 2 + 3 ° C and an air humidity of 96-98%. In these conditions, flowers can be stored for 2 weeks, slowly continuing to grow, but without losing their decorative qualities. Even a small presence of light causes the stems to bend towards its source. If it is necessary to work with a cut-off in the store, install a lamp of the green part of the spectrum of minimum power. Plants do not react to such lighting.

Before working with flowers, the sections of the stems are updated, wrapped in paper again and placed in water. Within 0.5 hour, the turgor will recover and the paper can be removed. Do not store flowers in the refrigerator along with vegetables and fruits, as they release ethylene, which accelerates the aging of flowers.

Storage in water: Soak in cold water for a day at + 8 ° C, or better with a 0.1% solution of calcium nitrate. The stems gain strength and the flowers last longer. If the flowers have blossomed early, you can store them for 1.5-2 weeks in water with snow, in the dark, at a temperature of + 2 ° C.

Use of tulip bulbs after distillation

If the cutting was carried out at the base of the stems, then watering is stopped, and after 3 weeks the bulbs are selected. During this time, the replacement bulbs are fully formed.

If one leaf was left, which is possible when forcing tall varieties, then after cutting, the plants are fed with a special liquid fertilizer for bulbous plants, watered until the leaves turn yellow and continue lighting or make the most of sunlight. For individual varieties, in this case, you can get replacement bulbs of 1 parsing and a rather large baby.

Then watering is stopped, the plantings are dried for 2 weeks at + 24 ° C. The bulbs are selected from the substrate and placed in mesh boxes for drying and further storage at a temperature of + 170C and a humidity of 70-80%. Then bulbs weighing 12-15 g are selected and used for growing. Rounded bulbs are left, flat ones are discarded, as they may not be capable of setting a flower bud. It is impractical to grow the bulbs of the January distillation, they do not form replacement bulbs of 1 and 2 parsing, there are very few parsing 3 and a large baby.

Selected bulbs are stored at + 17 + 20 ° C for a month, then at + 14 + 15 ° C until the autumn planting. Under these conditions, the bulbs do not dry out and do not germinate prematurely, despite the fact that the formation of flowers in them ends 2-2.5 months earlier than in bulbs grown in soil. They are planted in the ground at the usual time in the fall, with the last of the tulips, as late as possible.

Growing the bulbs after the March distillation allows for the next year to get about 30% of the bulbs of 1 parsing, and some even "extra", again suitable for distillation.

The end in the article: Forcing Tulips: Reasons for Failure

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