February 24, 2026

I’m starting year 4 of “Ginger Gardening” as my family calls it.

I started this business to provide flexible work for myself and provide affordable, super fresh flowers to my community. Turns out what I care about most is the SEASONAL part of growing cut flowers. I’ve stocked my community partner shops with wholesale flowers grown overseas for the past few winters, and it produces so much trash, isn’t my vibe, and clearly isn’t the best choice for the environment.

I can extend my fall blooms through Christmas with low tunnels, do fun dried flowers for January, and force bulbs to bloom a bit early in my greenhouse for March. But that leaves Valentine’s Day and February when we need fresh flowers to survive the grey Beaver County skies.

Enter: indoor tulip forcing!

As a Dutch woman, I LOVE tulips. They’re unfortunately my most expensive crop to grow. With climate change affecting bulb production in the Netherlands and increased tariffs, tulips have risen past $.50 per bulb. That’s a lot when each annual seedling costs a few pennies for me to start and grows buckets of flowers!

I experimented with forcing tulips this winter, which was such a fun experiment. I grew 3 different crates, and they were as sturdy and gorgeous as my outdoor tulips have been. I grow double varieties, which open up to have layers of petals like a peonies or garden roses. It’s not too tricky- just a combo of pre-chilled bulbs, cooler & rooting time to finish the “winter”, and then grow lights. Even with the expense, they’re the perfect crop to fill in my February gap and allow me to provide local cut flowers for Valentine’s Day moving forward.

The tulip forcing experiment was just what I needed to be done with winter wholesale, which drives me nuts and is not profitable at all. Keep an eye out in the next year for a variety of forced winter bulbs and some creative additions to winter bouquets!