Planting Ranunculus in Our Tunnel!

I can’t believe it is finally time to plant out the tunnel. We decided to buy our caterpillar tunnel sometime over the summer. After much research and consideration, Eric decided to buy our tunnel from Farmers Friend and to go with the 14×96 size. I couldn’t quite fathom that much space to grow in but I wasn’t going to argue with more flowers! 

The main reason for growing in a tunnel is for spring flowers. Having a tunnel allows us to plant bulbs and plugs in the fall, overwinter them, and they can bloom happily protected from the often volatile conditions spring brings. Wind, rain, fluctuating temperatures all can wreck delicate spring blooms. So Eric worked tirelessly to get the tunnel set up and ready for me to plant. I hope I was a good cheerleader because much of the work that needed to be done, I was of no use. 

Finally that day came and it was ranunculus planting day! While we are going to grow a couple other flowers in the tunnel, ranunculus is the queen. This flower almost can’t be beat. It is utterly gorgeous, quite rare to see in a home garden, and lasts weeks in a vase. Hard to beat that for a flower farmer. We ended up deciding on 9 different colors. Some of them are pictured below. 

Ranunculus are corms, not bulbs, and they are presoaked for planting. Once we got them presoaked, I had my daughter help me plant them. It took about 3 hours of non stop work to get 1300 corms planted and my goodness I was thankful for her help. It felt like such a relief to finish the day having accomplished our goal. 

Now the hard part starts. First, it is the long wait to see the first sprouts. Sometimes that can take a month to see. Talk about stressful! Then we have to make sure they don’t get too cold or too hot all winter. Drama queens. But this hard work is part of what makes them so special to enjoy in April. 

So now we wait….

For His Glory,

Alex

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