PRODUCTION OF TULIP BULBS. 19 



late-summer and autumn conditions are an important asset in the 

 curing of bulbs both in and out of the ground. 



If the bulb house is filled rapidly and to its capacity, there is a 

 proportionately large amount of moisture to be evaporated and got- 

 ten rid of at one time. Usually the bulbs come into the house rather 

 slowly, and some should be dry and ready to clean before the last 

 of the crop is dug. It is therefore advantageous to fill first one por- 

 tion of the compartment devoted to tulips, so that the ventilation 

 can be lessened at one end and put on fully where more needed. 



On Puget Sound the ventilating doors of the bulb house usually 

 stand open or partly open during the greater part of the day and are 

 closed at night. This treatment will be all the more emphasized if 

 the location is near the coast. Even 3 or 4 miles inland less ventila- 

 tion will be required. The advantage of the closed house at night 

 is to assist in keeping up the temperature, which in this location is 

 low. 



It should be remembered that tulip bulbs must not dry out rapidly. 

 The curing process is not simply one of evaporating the moisture, but 

 this moisture evaporation is the physically obvious indication of very 

 complicated life processes taking place in the bulbs on the shelves. 

 The drying out, therefore, should not be too sudden. If the bulbs 

 are dug at the proper time to preserve the coats, they will not 

 have turned color completely when brought into the bulb house. In 

 this condition they should not become dried out and ready to handle 

 in much less than two weeks. A little longer time does no injury, 

 and 10 days might be enough. 



The directions that can be given for handling bulbs in the bulb 

 house are necessarily very general. The work is one of those jobs 

 that the grower must learn to do by doing. He must learn to know 

 his stocks and to know what they need from day to day. 



This does not at all mean that the matter is complicated. It is 

 simple when compared with handling vegetatively vigorous plants 

 in the greenhouse. Indeed, for the past three years at the Bureau 

 of Plant Industry bulb house 300,000 tulips, besides the complement 

 of planting stock, have been cured annually, with little control of 

 ventilation. Operations have been carried on in an open shed with 

 fair success, but the bulbs were cleaned as quickly as possible and 

 then smothered with buckwheat hulls or old sacks in order to pro- 

 tect them from excessive desiccation and light. 



"CURING" THE BULBS. 



The word ''curing," as applied to tulip bulbs as well as to other 

 flowering bulbous stocks, is a misnomer. "Curing" bulbs is an 

 artificial and unnatural process necessitated by commercial handling 

 and not a process required by the stocks themselves. The more 



