Humble Beginnings

Just before a bulb (Commercial grade) is ready to be packed off to a greenhouse grower all the attendant growth must be trimmed.  This includes the many tiny bulblets that are attached to the main growth. So, each bulb leaves behind its successors. These successors (along with Scales)  become the lilies of the future. As measured around the middle of the bulblet, they are less than 3" in circumference. These bulblets then have been in the  ground as new growth for almost a year, albeit attached to its "mother". As a matter of fact the terminology used in the field are "mother" and "daughters."

Again, within twenty-four hours of being uprooted, these small, marble-sized growths are sorted, cleaned, and then replanted.

Row upon row of bulbs are dropped, hand oriented, then hilled (mounded to rows and furrows). But even at this stage there is  another twist: every bulb gets an added assist from the deft turn of many hands. Just after the bulbs have been paraded into rows, but before they are covered,  rafts of fast hands turn and place each bulblet so as to optimize growth when it comes in the spring.

In the spring the bulb sends up a growth tip. For a period this new growth is encouraged. Then in June the farm hands swarm the field and pick off the flowers so that the remaining growth is channeled back down to the foliage and bulb. At this point in a lily bulb's life it measures only slightly larger than when first planted.