Tulips, Hyacinths, and Peony Abundance | Fall Bulb Unboxing

This video is sponsored by Squarespace. One of the most exciting times of the year for me personally on the farm is when the big bulk order comes in. One of my favorite parts of farming is that when you order stuff for the farm, you don't order just a little bit, you order pallets full. So I'm really excited to get to share with you guys the full order, which is everything that gets planted now to bloom for spring. And so in here, there is tulips and hyacinths and peonies, a lot of really, really exciting purchases. The first thing that I'm gonna start with is the hyacinth bulbs because there's something a little bit different. It's something that I have never personally grown before as a cut flower. I've grown them in the home garden and when you grow them for a home garden, they're very simple. They're like any bulb, you get it into the ground in the fall, it survives over the winter and in the spring, a big beautiful flower pops out of the ground and you enjoy it and then it dies back and it comes back year after year. But when you grow them for cut flowers, they are not the same. They're actually really tricky to grow as a cut flower. One of the issues with a hyacinth like this is that it just doesn't get a very long stem length. That's why it's not super common to see these used as a cut flower. These are a very specialty product and you know, if you can get your hands on them, they're gorgeous to have as a cut flower. Hyacinths like this have a lot of scent. They're really impactful. They're really stunning. They're, you know, they're very much like a focal showstopper during the spring time of year. But as I said, the stem length isn't that great. So when people grow them for cut flowers, even more tricky than tulips where you pull them out and it's a one and done, you throw out the tulip bulb. Same idea, but when you pull this out of the ground and it has the flower attached, you need every little bit of stem that you can get. And so to do that, you actually shave off the bulb to get that extra couple inches of stem that is growing out of the center of the bulb. So they're kind of interesting that way. And then how you grow them, like when you're going to grow them for cut flowers is really similar to the tulips. You can plant them quite densely together because they are going to be getting pulled out of the ground. They're not going to be perennializing. So, you know, these, these are, these are a fun, a fun new thing for Ian to be experimenting with next spring. So there is 900 hyacinths. So that is, that's going to be, that's going to be a lot of beautiful amazing bouquets if they all work out. And the varieties here are like some, some really beautiful colors. So this one is called Jan Boss, and this is a pinky red color. Really, really impactful color, really stunning, really dark. One of the things that I like about the hyacinths is the fact that they come in such a range of colors. They really, you know, they're kind of like the tulips where you can really get a wide variety of different looks out of them while still growing the same thing. So, you know, there's more exciting ones here. Okay. So there is 200 of Carnegie, and these are a really pretty, really clean white, you know, white's, white's such classic, you can do so much with it. And look at these bulbs. These are just, these are gorgeous. The size of these nice big bulbs, you know, the bigger the bulb size, the bigger your flower is going to be in the end. So it's exciting when, when you see an order like this 200 bulbs that fills an entire bulb crate and all the hyacinths that got ordered up here, all these really nice size looks like the sizing on it is called a 16 slash 17. Like I said, I've never grown these for sale. So I don't know a ton about like the different sizing, how they come. But usually this is, Oh, I guess I didn't mention, this is an order from Van Nort. This is, this is all the, the fall order from Van Nort. And usually the stuff that we order from is kind of in that bigger size, right? Same with like the tulips, right? We might, we might order varieties that you can buy, you know, at Costco or any, any sort of store. But the bulb size is going to be substantially bigger, right? So same with these hyacinths, you can find hyacinths for cheap in the store, but you're definitely not getting this grade. Okay. So this is a crate of 200, uh, Aida, Aida, don't know how to pronounce that one. And this is a dark purple. This is really pretty color. All right, next up we have 200 pink pearl and these yet again, these bulbs are just gorgeous. This is a pink that also has some white shades in it. It's kind of the perfectly named, uh, color. Cause it's like a pearl pink, you know, pink and pearl colors. I don't know. I, when I, when I was like, I was like, Oh yeah, that's a good name. That color. I'd named that pink pearl. Uh, so these really pretty, uh, the softer pinks, you know, in, in the spring, these, so here in the Okanagan, these aren't going to be blooming for Easter. Unfortunately, if we, if you could have these for Easter, this is like such the perfect Easter color. This, this pink, you know, get some yellow daffodils, these pink hyacinths, perfect little Easter basket colors. Um, but yeah, no, these, these won't bloom for that time of year. These will bloom more around mother's day. Um, which is like what the benefit of them is being able to have a decadent focal to put together those mother's day bouquets because it is the biggest sale day of the year here on the farm. Okay. And then finally last variety there's 200 Rembrandt. And I think this is out of all the colors. I think this is my favorite color. This is a purple, a little bit of a softer purple than the ADA. Um, and then it has like white, white details. Um, so the, the variegated coloring on it is really fun. And like that contrast is, it's really impactful. I think these, these will be, uh, a fun one to, to see in a bouquet. Next up there is 350 peonies. I thought I was a little crazy buying 80 peonies, uh, for my yard. Um, but not as crazy as Ian is for peonies because with 350 extra peonies, that's going to be getting pretty close to 1400 peonies in total on the farm. Though I gotta, I do think there's probably space for 1500. There's a few more varieties that, that I imagine like may, may still show up into the peony patch. Um, but for this, so Ian's favorite color of flower is red. And so he needed to bump up the peony patch. The peony patch needed more red. Um, we do have a variety of red planted, which is, he bought more of them. This one here, red charm, really pretty red and like red peonies. Like they're not, they're not red, red. They're, they're like a richer, darker pink color. Um, like a ready pink is what these look like. But, uh, yeah, so red charm, I think we have, uh, I think there's maybe 90 already planted. Red charm was the only red peony that was available. Um, when we ordered up the big peony order that we planted last fall. Um, so, so we put a pretty good patch of them in, um, and they, and they did really well. Um, but so what Ian did here though, is he's diversifying up the reds in the peony patch a little bit. So these are crates of 50 and let's see, what size are they? There are three, five eye. So with peonies, the sizing, it's not about how big the root is. It's about how many of these little sprouts are at the top. So when they say there are three to three slash five, it means there's three to five eyes on each of the plants. Um, and you know, you can see that like these, they're, they're pretty decent peony roots. Um, you know, especially like for the price. So this, like I said, this is an order from Van Nort. Um, where we'd been purchasing our peonies in the past is from Unicorn Blooms and they were getting in like a little bit of a higher grade of peony. Um, so the prices, the prices were kind of, you know, their, their ordering sheet is very tempting. They have peonies that are like hundreds of dollars for a single root. Uh, obviously I'm not crazy enough to buy any of those, but a lot of the peonies that we bought were on the, the cheaper end of the scale. I was kind of price limiting myself a little bit and you know, we kind of paid like $15 average. Sometimes they went up to $20 each for each root. Um, these, these roots here, they were, you know, they're quite a bit cheaper. Um, I can't remember the price off the top of my head. Um, but I think they were about like half the price for those ones that we'd gotten from, from Unicorn Blooms in the past. So, you know, makes it, makes it a lot more accessible to be buying crates of 50 at the same time, you know, and the nice thing about like when you get those roots, like the ones that I got for myself, they're really big, they have a ton of eyes, you know, some of those ones that have 10 eyes, um, you know, when you get a really big root into the ground, it's kind of like buying an extra year, right? But if all you can afford is these smaller sizes and these cheaper roots, um, you know, they're all eventually going to turn into these big, huge peony shrubs. Um, they just, they just need a little bit of time. So, uh, if, if price is a concern, don't be too concerned about buying the smaller ones. They're, they're still going to be great plants. Okay. But so this is Red Charm and there's 50 of them. Beautiful double. Um, all these varieties that Ian got here in the red are all doubles. Um, so there's the Red Charm and then there is Kansas. Um, and this one's really pretty. Uh, let's see, pull out a root. There we go. Yeah. I really, I really liked the look. I mean, all, I mean, peonies, they're, they're easy to get tempted by. They're so gorgeous, but yeah, Kansas, a big, beautiful red double, really, really pretty, uh, really fun. Um, but out of all the reds that Ian bought, I think I gotta say this one, Fiona is my favorite. Um, in the pictures, when I've looked at it, it's just a little bit more full, um, than the Red Charm and the Kansas. Um, and I don't know, it may be like, maybe it just photographs better. Um, but, but this Fiona is, is really, really pretty. Um, you know, I think it'll be fun to see them all side by side. Sometimes, um, when you grow, grow plants like this, where they're very similar, it can be really hard to spot the differences. I know that because we have like three or four different, uh, corals. I think we have like Coral Charm, uh, Pink Hawaiian or Coral Hawaiian or something. I don't know. I can't, I can't remember the names of them off the top of my head, but when I went into the field, I went specifically trying to see if I could tell where one patch began and the other one ended in the corals. Um, and they were all just really similar. The thing that I noticed the biggest difference in the corals was like one would kind of bloom a week before the other one. And so with these reds, if that's the only difference between the plants, if it's just that, you know, with Ian having the three varieties of red, instead of having, you know, all of the red charm come on, on the exact same week, uh, if instead he can kind of spread the harvest across a couple of weeks in the red colors, like even that is, is just, it's a good advantage to have. And then, like I said, there's 350 peonies here. And if there's three varieties of red at 50 per crate, that means that that isn't where the majority of the peonies are. And that is because there is 200 Sarah Bernhardt, um, which in my opinion is like the correct amount for everyone to have of Sarah Bernhardt. Uh, it's, it's my absolute favorite peony. I love it. Like the, the coloring on it is so pretty and it's also one of the last peonies to bloom. It's, it's a really, really late variety. Um, so, you know, it's here on the farm, um, often it can be a little challenging to get kind of like the customer sales ramped up, right? So like the very first flowers of the year, um, the very first thing that we can get to bloom here in the Okanagan is daffodils. Um, but I would never want to go super hard on daffodils because the first week or two that you're trying to sell, it can, it can often be hard to kind of get the word out there, have all the customers know what you have to sell. Um, you know, you kind of need to start with a little bit and then ramp up as ever, as you know, the word gets spread, flowers are started again. Um, and so with the peonies, you know, with, with having so many peonies at a certain point, I imagine that same kind of system, um, being there, right? You want some early peonies because you want to have peony, you want to be the first people to have peonies in the area, right? So having those early varieties, those early blooming varieties are going to be able to get those customers coming to you. Um, but it, as like the peony season goes on, it's just going to build excitement. So if all of your varieties are these really early season ones, it might be hard to sell all the flowers you can possibly cut in that season. Um, whereas if they kind of slowly ramp up until you have 200 Sarah Bernhardts all blooming at the exact same time, um, then everyone's going to be super stoked and they're going to rush out to get the last peonies of the year and buy armfuls. And that is why I think having 200 Sarah Bernhardt is perfect. Um, one of the interesting things about these Sarah Bernhardts is these were very, very affordable. That's the reason why there's 200 of them also, because these are a two, three eye. I think that if I remember correct, I think the price on this was like five or $6 per root. Um, so, you know, this, this is kind of fun. Like I was saying, um, the smaller, the, the tuber, the less eyes, you know, kind of the more time it's going to take before it turns into a shrub. Um, so, uh, but it's, it's fun to be able to kind of see the difference, right? So this is a two, three eye in the Sarah Bernhardt. And then this is one of the three, five eyes in the red variety. Um, so it's, it's not a huge difference, but it's the eyes, right? Like the eyes on these Sarah Bernhardts are quite small, whereas the eyes on, on the three fives are a lot bigger and then there's less of them. So when you buy this smaller size, which is really affordable, so it's easy to do, um, when you grow this for a year, you're kind of going to get a plant that's going to be about as strong as this one size bigger. Um, yeah. So by buying this, buying this bigger variety is like buying a year on top of these, but, uh, yeah, there's a lot of peonies out there. So these can, these can take a little bit of time and slowly come on. Um, yeah, but 200 of them, each of these crates has a hundred of these, of these, uh, of these roots, which is fun to think. One hundred peonies and just one little crate. And then last, but definitely not least is the tulips. Um, so for the last couple of years, we had been doing about 10,000 tulips for the spring season, which is like a crazy amount of tulips. That was all hands on deck. The cooler got filled hard to keep up with it more tulips than we were able to sell. Um, so Ian very wisely, uh, got a much more reasonable sized tulip order. And so there's 3,500 tulips here. So, you know, that's still, that's still lots. That's, that's still a lot of bouquets. This year we did eight tulip bunches, like each bunch had eight flowers in it. So if you do the math, that's still a lot of bouquets to sell. Um, but, uh, the same as what we did last year happened here. So in the past we have grown double tulips and then we've also gotten some single tulips to mix in. Um, the single tulip price is usually a little bit cheaper than these like double peony style tulips. Um, but what we found for doing the sales is that those single tulips, it's not like the bulbs were like a penny and then, you know, we could sell them and make money no matter what the, the ball price difference was, you know, even if it was half price, what like one of these peony tulips are, um, you know, it's, they were just still too expensive for what people wanted to pay for a single tulip, but these double tulips are so special. They're so different and you can't find them anywhere else. They really are a specialty product. So by growing only those doubles, um, it was a lot easier to sell the bouquets. The doubles also have a way longer vase life. I find that the singles, they kind of get like five days. Um, whereas the doubles that kind of can get up to 10 days. So getting that extra vase life, you know, like tulips are gorgeous and tulips are great. Um, but you know, with the, with the roadside stand here, the customers come to expect a bouquet that's going to last a week. And so by making sure that the season begins with bouquets that last a week, um, it just makes it a lot easier. So yeah, highly recommend for cut flowers, getting the doubles, the, you know, the price difference. It's, it seems like a lot when you're buying them. Um, but it makes a lot of sense when you're selling them. Okay. So there is a new variety that I've never seen before. This is Vogue and there's 500 of them. If I remember correctly, I think that this was a substitute. Um, so when you order for a farm for tulips, you actually put in your order around the time when tulips are blooming, you have to order them really early in the year and they sell you tulips, not based on what they have. They sell you tulips based on what they think they're going to have. Right. So every year there's, there's like crop failures there. They go to harvest up the bulbs, um, after they bloom and then send them off for everyone to have them in the fall. And you know, maybe the field flooded. And so the tulip bulbs all rotted in that one specific variety. And so you don't always get what you ordered. And this is one of the substitutes, but it's really beautiful. So Vogue is, is a pink and then it has like white details in it. And as it, as it ages, as it blooms, it, it fades into like lighter, softer pinks. Um, so like, it looks like a really sophisticated, a really sophisticated, um, tulip something. So in the past we have ordered, uh, Angelique. So Angelique is kind of like the pink and white, the soft pink that I've been ordering. Um, and maybe I've been ordering it because the price is a little bit cheaper. Um, but this Vogue as a substitute for Angelique, um, would be like, it's, it looks a lot, it looks similar, but way more beautiful than Angelique. So, you know, it'd be exciting to see what this one blooms out like. Okay. Next up there is 500 of what I think is one of the best tulips ever. Um, this is yellow pomponette. Um, so it, this is a bright, clean yellow, nice big double. Um, these bloom like later. This is like a later, um, variety one and yellow pomponette tends to be the same price as single tulips when we've gone to purchase it like year after year, the price on it is just really, really affordable for how incredible it is. I know a lot of other people when making their bouquets, they're looking for something softer, more romantic, and more feminine. Um, so this like super bright yellow isn't necessarily going to be as desirable. They're wanting, they're wanting Vogue, like what we just opened up. Um, but like our customers, they just really love the brights. And I can relate when spring comes, it's like, you know, it's been so dark. It's been so gray. These bright punchy in your face colors are just really refreshing. They have, they get me really excited for the summer sun to come again. Um, so these, yeah, so yellow, yellow pomponette really great. They've, they've like grown really well every year. They've been really easy to grow. Um, nice big bulb size. You know, if you, it's on the list, if I was only going to grow three, it'd be yellow pomponette. And then it would also be a sunlover, which is this next one. There's 500 sunlover and, uh, same idea, big bulb. Like the price on this is like really affordable, gorgeous. Um, but the coloring on it is a variegated. And so I love the sunlover because it's a whole mix of stuff. It'll have like oranges and reds and yellows and like, it'll be yellow and then has some red streaks all over it. Or like they're, they're just really cool. They're a really, really fun mix, but the yellow tones that are in it are like exactly the same as the yellow pomponette. They almost look like if yellow pomponette got like a disease that made it turn kind of reddish, that's like what sunlover would be. They, they feel like, like they're very closely related cousins. Um, so like when, and they bloom at a really similar time too. So these two, we pair together all the time. And then if I was only going to grow three, the third one is this last one on the bottom here. This is a good schnick and this I pair with the, with the sun lover and the yellow pomponette. So these gorgeous, these, these are a little bit more expensive. You know, I can't remember what the price on them was, but like in the past, the yellow pomponette has been in the 30 cents and then the good schnick spin in like the 50 cents. And I think the prices were a little bit higher this year. Um, but you know, these, these are a bit of a step up, but the flowers on these are just massive, right? Like if, if the yellow pomponette has like a bud that's like that big, you know, and it opens up to like when they're open, they'll like be the size of my hand. The good schnicks are like, like the bud is like the size of my fist almost. And they open up and they're just massive, massive flowers. And the tones on these are a little, a little bit romantic. There's like reds, but then there's like creamy tones mixed in. These are definitely like neon yellow. These are a little bit more muted, a little bit more soft. Um, you know, just very, very gorgeous, but so they blend really nicely. I find there's like a lot of red tones in this. I can get some orange and the sun lover and the yellow pomponette is the yellow. Um, we often put those together like three, three and two to do a bouquet recipe. Um, and they just, they look beautiful. They look gorgeous together. So if I was only to grow three, I'd grow those, but we have more than three. There's still more. This is 500 Freeman and I love this tulip. This is, uh, this why I started growing this tulip. It's double, it's orange. Um, it has some like kind of green streaky color. Sometimes it's very, it can be like coppery as it ages too. Um, so I started growing this when I decided that I wasn't going to buy the most expensive tulips. I was like, Nope, I'm being price conscious. I'm only buying doubles, but I'm also only buying the doubles that are a little bit cheaper. I'm not buying the dollar a bulb bubble doubles. I'm buying the 50 cent a bulb doubles. Um, so there's a lot of really gorgeous coppery colored tulips that I swoon over and the pictures are incredible. Um, one is like copper image. Um, but there's been a few over the years that I've tried and they've always really disappointed me. They've been susceptible to disease. The, you know, the flowers haven't really developed nicely. They've, you know, they had crooked necks. They didn't grow well. Um, whereas the Freeman super easy to grow, you know, like often with the price, the ease, the lower the price, the easier they are to grow. That's why the price is down, right? It's, it was easy for the person who grew the bulbs to grow Freeman so they can afford to sell them for less. Um, and it's going to be easy for you to grow it as well. So even though Freeman is a little bit more punchy, I find it still similar enough to those like copper flowers that I can get everything I want out of a copper tulip. Um, just a lot easier and at a lot better price. So I, I highly recommend this one. And then there is 500 Matt Tacoma. And this is one that we've grown for a bunch of years too. This is a white, um, a white double and it's very nice. It's like clean and like nice big poofy heads. And this is a later blooming variety. Um, in the past, we have grown an earlier blooming white, um, called exotic emperor, which I love. I love that tulip. It's the very first tulip that blooms, um, on the farm and it has a scent to it. I mean, those two things just make me excited. But this Mount Tacoma is a lot, a lot fuller. The, the exotic emperor, it is a double because it has multiple petals, but it doesn't open up into like a pom pom. Whereas the, the Mount Tacoma is, is like a bit more of a, of those peony style ones. Um, but so I love this having a white is great. Like this mixed with that pink, the Vogue, like that just super easy, quick to put together bouquet or even just pure white. Um, you know, over the years I've found you can't have just white. If you only have white, then it can be hard to sell. But if you don't have white, then you definitely miss it. Okay. And then finally, the last one is one that is very exciting. Uh, this is 500 blue. Wow. And this one is pricey. This one is expensive. Uh, I've never grown this, um, as a cut flower just because it, it was pretty expensive. Um, but it's so beautiful that I've ordered it in the past to put into the garden. And this is just an, this is an incredible tulip. Um, you know, like always when, when a flower is blue, it never says it's blue. It's never blue. Uh, it's, it's either like a purpley color or it's, it's a more of like a pinky color, but this one, this one is like a purpley blue. Um, so like, it's the soft purple. It's, it's really pretty. It's really unique. Um, I haven't really seen anything else that has that same kind of color tones to it. And the first time I, like when it first came up and budded, I was really disappointed with it. It's sent to like often like all of these, right. Being doubles, they have really big bowl. Um, sorry. They have really big buds, right? So they come up, the leaves come and then you can see them starting to form the bud. Right. And like with these doubles, they'll like a normal tulip, it'll be kind of shaped like this as the bud starts to fill in and then it all like crack open. But with the doubles, they, they look almost like gumballs. Like there are these circles on top of a stem because there's so many petals. So when the blue wow first came up, it was, it was like, it looked a lot more similar to, to a single in how the bud kind of formed. And it was, it was really small. The head of it was like really tiny. And I was like, Oh, well that's kind of disappointing. It was super expensive. It was supposed to be this big, huge, gorgeous flower. I'm like, it's, it's not, it's not wowing me. Like the name said it was going to, um, so I didn't bother picking it. I just left it. And that is when the magic happened because it's like started to open up and it went from this like tiny little bud, like one of the smallest buds out of all the tulips into this just massive flower. Um, like I said, the Gudesnik, the, the size of the flowers are like double the size of all these other, other doubles that we grow. And that is what the blue wow was like to like where other tulips, you know, they're, they're kind of like when they open up the flowers, like the size of a fist, like these were like almost like a double fist. It was, I, there was some sort of witchcraft that happened as this opened up some sort of magic fairy dust that's contained inside these buds. I'm still not sure how these flowers go from these tiny buds into these big, huge, beautiful flowers. Um, but 500 of them to see like, um, like 500 of them, like all opened up or just like a bouquet of just blue wow, that'd be really decadent. Um, so it's, it's going to be really exciting to, to see how, how these develop. One of my favorite things, as I said, is to get these big, huge bulk orders, you know, to, to go through 3,500 tulips, 350 peonies, almost a thousand hyacinths. You know, it's really exciting. It's, I, I absolutely love having like entire crates of things. It's like, it's a ridiculous amount of flowers to have. Um, but, uh, the one, the one downside of, uh, you know, the fun of buying things, a pallet at the time is, uh, the effort of how much work it takes to, uh, to plant all of this stuff. Um, so, so yeah, this, this is the fun part, getting to, getting to show off the order is, is definitely the fun. Uh, this, this represents a lot of hours of work that needs to be done, uh, before the snow flies here on the farm. One thing you may know about me based on this video is that I can get tempted into buying a lot of something. I love buying big, huge orders of stuff. Um, but it also needs to be convenient for me. And the truth is it's only really companies with websites that convince me to put in these big, huge orders. If you need a website and you're looking to tempt people like me, Squarespace can help you with that. 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