Most of us pick up a potted Easter Lily or two as they appear in markets and flower shops, pay the few dollars they cost, and don’t give any thought to the great care and attention to detail that it took to produce the plant. Every characteristic of the plants you bought has been critically analyzed and carefully nurtured and planned for.
![]( "Easter lilies")
- Easter Lilies
Easter lilies normally bloom in late summer, so getting them to bloom during the two-week window when people are buying them for Easter is a real challenge. To further complicate matters, Easter is not a set day on the calendar. Since Easter Sunday is defined as the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox, it can happen any time between March 22 and April 25. And since growing Easter lilies is an exacting business in which one has to pay a great deal of attention to details, only specialists can stay in business.
The Easter lilies that you buy are the culmination of three or four years of hard and precise planning and work. First little baby Easter lily bulbs are removed from mother plants and planted in great fields. A year later, yearling plants are replanted in another field, where they get special care for a second year. After the second year the mature plants are dug again. This time baby bulbs are removed for continuing the cycle and the mature bulbs are shipped to growers who pot them and spend many more months growing and conditioning the brown scaly bulbs to grow and flower under very precise conditioning of temperature, soil moisture, light quality, and photoperiod so as to be perfect for market during the ever-shifting two-week window.