Wednesday, May 10th
Flower, flowers, and more flowers. Today’s excursions to the flower auction and tulip fields were right up my alley. I LOVE flowers and have always wondered about the supply chain behind them. We had an early morning wake up call and headed to Royal Holland Flora around 6:20am. Royal Holland Flora is a huge building 250 football fields to be exact. Once we walked into the room there was an instant smell of all these wonder flowers. They had workers on all these little tractors moving flower crates all over. We had a self guided tour and learned a lot about the flower auction process. The whole process goes on for 24 hours a day, but auctioning begins every morning at 6:00am. Buyers can do their purchasing from the auction rooms on site or on the internet. Flora Holland has most of its bidders in Europe and once bided on will be delivered to their workplace within 90 minutes. They do this by plane for some of the further countries in Europe.
After Flora Holland we headed to the tulip farm. The tulip farm is owned by Daan Jansze and his wife. He is a third generation tulip farmer. He explained to us the whole process of his business there at the farm. Every fall he does a crop rotation and plants the old bulbs from the previous season. Every year he uses the same bulbs because they are more mature and in turn will have larger, better lasting flowers. Tulip farms pride themselves in their ability to remain sustainable. Once the season is over he cuts the flowers and leaves them on the ground which feeds the bulbs allowing them to grow larger. He also mentions that the flowers cut at the end of each season will be used in the flower festival to get one last use out of them. His main income involves the product to the consumer process. He explained that many countries like The U.S and Korea are very picky about their tulips with the fact that they can’t have any scent. His farm is very big on the bulbs and that is what they are most known for. It was very cool to learn all about all the different things that go into the flower business in Holland and just how important it is in the country.
