And don’t complain that there is no money: we grew more than 40,000 tulips in the greenhouse - now this is our main income. Sharing my experience of running a simple business

If you ask any person to name the most popular spring flowers, he will almost certainly remember tulips. In fact, in terms of sales volumes on February 14 or March 8, they are not inferior to roses. Since it is impossible to obtain fresh buds so early in the natural environment, many farmers plant them indoors. However, this does not mean that growing tulips by March 8 in a greenhouse for beginners is in demand only two months a year: experience shows that people willingly buy them even in November. At the same time, in the fall and winter, the Russian market presents mainly imported products, which opens up wide opportunities for a novice entrepreneur.

Varieties of tulips for growing

Tulips are bulbous plants of the Liliaceae family, 25–80 cm high. They are characterized by elongated fleshy leaves and single peduncles on which large bright buds are formed. In nature, there are more than two thousand varieties of this crop, through the efforts of Dutch flower growers in 1981, divided into four groups, including a total of fifteen classes.

The first group includes flowers with a short growing season, mainly suitable for growing tulips in pots. It consists of two classes:

• 1st grade: Simple early. Plants with strong stems 30–40 cm high. The flowers are goblet-shaped, small, yellow or red. A bit short for cutting;
• 2nd class: Terry early. They reach a height of 30–40 cm. Lush yellow or red flowers are large in size, and therefore the stems often bend.

The second group includes decorative tulips with an average growing season. It also consists of two classes:

• 3rd grade: Triumph. Flowers are 50–70 cm high with large goblet-shaped buds of various colors, including two-tone. They are distinguished by strong stems;
• Grade 4: Darwinian hybrids. They reach a height of 60–80 cm and form flowers with a diameter of up to 10 cm. In the heat they open strongly and therefore require coolness.

The third group includes flowers with a long growing season. This includes seven classes that are ideal for growing tulips in the garden:

• 5th grade: Simple late ones. Flowers are 65–70 cm high with large goblet-shaped buds of any color, including combined ones. Suitable for cutting;
• 6th grade: Lily flowers. Tulips are 50–60 cm high. The flowers have sharp petals and, when opened, look like lilies. Range of shades - from white to burgundy;
• 7th grade: Fringed. They reach a height of 60–80 cm. The edges of the petals have a thick fringe of contrasting color. Colors range from white to dark purple;
• 8th grade: Green-colored. They grow up to 40–60 cm. A distinctive feature of large goblet buds is the green tint on the outer side of the petals;
• 9th grade: Rembrandt's tulips. Plants up to 50–70 cm high, with variegated flowers covered with contrasting spots and stripes with a diameter of 7–9 cm;
• 10th grade: Parrots. They reach a height of 50–65 cm. They have buds up to 18 cm in size, the petals of which are cut like a bird’s wing. Color from white to cherry;
• 11th grade: Late terry. Tulips up to 50–60 cm high, having buds with a large number of petals. This makes them look like peonies.

The fourth group includes species plants. They are interesting for growing tulips at home, but have no industrial significance:

• 12th grade: Kaufman's tulips. They bloom the earliest and reach a height of 25–30 cm. They have pointed petals, and therefore the open bud looks like a star;
• Grade 13: Foster's Tulips. They grow up to 40–50 cm. Two-color goblet buds are distinguished by corrugated petals, slightly curved outward;
• Grade 14: Greig's tulips. They have a height of 25–30 cm. Pointed petals of red or red-yellow tones bend back when opened;
• Grade 15: Botanical. This class includes all other wild, low-growing, multi-flowered tulips of various colors and shapes.

Listed below are some interesting decorative varieties of tulips that successfully adapt to closed ground conditions:

Is there a future for the tulip business?

If you have been looking for a business idea for a long time and the question of what kind of business is relevant today with minimal investment haunts you, but you do not believe that tulips can become a promising business, considering that the flower market is oversaturated with more beautiful imported products, we will try to convince you in the opposite. Let's start with the fact that tulips are always in great demand among buyers, if only because:

• These products can be purchased at any time at an affordable price (compared, for example, with flowers of Dutch origin);
• Tulips grow well not only in the garden or greenhouse conditions; it is also not difficult to organize the cultivation of tulips in pots at home (the flower does not require a lot of light, high temperatures and planting space (from one sq. m. you can get from 200 to 300 plants );
• To start a business, at first, you can get by with small investments (investments will need to be made in the purchase of planting material and arrangement of beds) and establish the process of growing tulips at home;
• Organizing the sale of flowers at low prices will also not be difficult, especially if the local flower market sells mainly expensive imported flowers.

We think that all these factors undoubtedly make the tulip business very profitable, and the low price, especially in the context of the economic crisis, which has recently not had a very positive impact on any business, is also very promising. Therefore, if you like working with flowers and you need an idea for your own business with minimal investment, pay attention to the idea with tulips. After all, think about what is profitable to trade during the crisis of 2022? That's right - a product that, first of all, is of high quality and inexpensive. And personally grown flowers are just such a product. After all, no holiday is complete without flowers: weddings, birthdays and even mourning events are accompanied by flowers.

Varieties of tulips for the greenhouse

Ways to grow tulips

One of the advantages of growing tulips is the ability to do this on any scale - from three bushes on a windowsill to a greenhouse of several hectares. In accordance with the assigned tasks, the method of planting them is selected:

1. On the beds. If a farmer plans to grow tulips at home on a small scale, he can arrange beds directly on the floor in any cool room - basement, garage, barn. The planting density will be small;
2. In boxes. Using containers with a substrate, it is possible to organize a continuous production of flowers - while one batch will take root in the germination chamber, the other will grow and produce buds on the greenhouse shelves;
3. In pots. It is difficult to obtain a large number of flowers this way, so it is considered amateur. To grow tulips at home in a pot, you need a container 25–30 cm deep. It is filled with soil and placed on the windowsill;
4. In hydrogel. This polymer retains water well, but does not contain nutrients, and therefore is only suitable for forcing flowers. In addition, the gel is expensive, which makes its use on an industrial scale unprofitable;
5. On hydroponics. Growing tulips hydroponically in a greenhouse is a technology for forcing flowers on porous mats soaked in a solution of fertilizers and microelements. This way you can get the harvest a couple of weeks earlier.

How to prepare the soil for tulips?

In small greenhouse farms, we are usually not talking about growing tulips in gel or hydroponics, and therefore farmers have to prepare the soil. Garden soil is not suitable for such purposes, since it contains few useful substances and many pathogenic microorganisms. What can be done:

• The substrate for tulips is prepared from 6 parts of high-moor peat, 3 parts of last year's fruit sawdust and 1 part of coarse sand;
• Plants develop better on neutral soils. The permissible soil acidity for tulips is in the range of pH 6.5–7.2;
• Before laying the substrate in the greenhouse, the fungal spores and bacteria contained in it are destroyed with a solution of the fungicide Fitosporin-M;
• To increase the nutritional properties of the soil, 20 g of calcium nitrate, 15 g of superphosphate, 10 g of potassium sulfate and 50 g of chalk are added per square meter of beds;
• To grow tulips in a greenhouse, the substrate is placed in boxes 15–20 cm high. The thickness of the main layer of soil in them should be 10 cm;
• The design of the boxes should include legs 15–20 cm high, which will be useful when installing them in stacks in the germination chamber.

Soil for flowers

Tulips are grown in a substrate of river sand and sawdust, sand and peat. It is important that the soil is homogeneous and drains water well. Drainage is poured into the bottom of the boxes, and then about 10 cm of soil is poured. Before planting flowers, the soil is steamed with air heated to 80 ° C and watered with a fungicide. Then a layer of sand is poured on top. It will protect the bulbs from mold and guarantee a clean cut when harvesting. Flowers are not very picky about fertilizers, so vermicompost and mineral fertilizers are not always worth including in your business plan.

The planted bulbs are kept for two weeks at a temperature of about 9 ° C, and then transferred to a warm room with good lighting. After about a month, the plants will begin to produce buds. Based on your cutting plan, you can control their growth by lowering or raising the temperature. As a rule, a humidity of 75% and an air temperature of about 18 °C are considered ideal.

How to select and prepare bulbs?

Growing tulips from seeds, although the most inexpensive way to obtain flowers, is rarely used for commercial purposes.
There are two reasons for this: firstly, the seed develops into a full-fledged plant and produces a peduncle only five to six years after planting, and secondly, the bud formed on it is likely to be inconspicuous. Therefore, it is better to use ready-made bulbs. You can find them in nurseries, gardening centers and from farmers who are engaged in this business professionally. When choosing planting material, you must remember that during forcing the flowers feed on the substances stored in the bulbs, and therefore the success of the entire enterprise depends on their quality. What you need to pay attention to:

• To grow tulips in winter, use large bulbs of the “Extra” class or the first sort, weighing at least 25–30 g and up to 4 cm in diameter;
• It is necessary to inspect the scales of the bulb. A dense texture and dark brown color indicate that it has been in the soil for too long;
• There should be no brown spots, traces of mold or mildew on the planting material. Diseases most often appear on the bottom or at the growing point;
• You should not purchase bulbs that have already begun to grow and have sprouted. Only a short ponytail is allowed;
• Good planting material has a dense bottom covered with tubercles, from which roots will subsequently appear;
• The bulb must be full-bodied. A small mass for its volume indicates damage to rot or overfeeding with nitrogen fertilizers.

You will have to constantly cooperate with suppliers, since stimulating flower growth completely depletes the planting material and thereby precludes its reuse. If the manufacturer has not pre-prepared the bulbs for planting, you will have to do it yourself:

• For the development of flower primordia and daughter bulbs in the planting material, it is kept for 25–30 days at 23–25°C, and then the same amount at 17–20°C;
• To speed up this process and get flowers by the New Year, in the first week the temperature is increased to 30–34°C, and then reduced to 16–18°C;
• Before planting, the bulbs are cleaned of outer scales, which makes it possible to identify hidden diseases and speed up the process of moisture absorption;
• Finally, the material is kept for two hours in a 0.03% solution of potassium permanganate, and then treated with a mixture of TMTD fungicide and wood ash.

How to plant and germinate bulbs?

The technology of growing tulips in a greenhouse with constant control over climatic parameters allows you to accurately calculate the date of planting the bulbs in order to obtain ready-made buds for a specific holiday.
The calculations use parameters known for each specific variety - the duration of the cooling period and the period of direct forcing of flowers. Cooling the bulbs is necessary in order to make them quickly accumulate substances that promote the development of shoots. By the time the procedure is completed, they grow a root system and produce stems several centimeters long. It all starts with planting the bulbs in a container with soil:

• The substrate in the boxes is watered with a small amount of water so that it compacts and reaches the required humidity of 50–60%;
• The bulbs are placed in the main layer of soil with their bottoms down and pressed. The distance between them is 1.5–2 cm, which gives a planting density of 250–300 pcs/m²;
• Next, the bulbs are covered with a second portion of soil up to the top bud, after which they are watered again with a 0.2% calcium nitrate solution;
• If necessary, add a little substrate, trying to cover the tops that protrude to the surface;
• The boxes are transferred to the germination chamber and placed in stacks. Turn off the lights in the room, otherwise the bulbs will begin to expel shoots before rooting;
• The bulbs are inspected twice a week in order to promptly remove fungus-affected or non-germinating specimens.

For controlled cultivation of tulips by a given date, two methods of forcing are used today - classic and developed by Dutch farmers:

• The classic method involves keeping the bulbs at a temperature of 9–10°C for the period recommended for a particular variety - from 14 to 20 weeks. In this case, the humidity in the room is set at 65–70%;
• The Dutch method involves keeping the material at a temperature of 5°C and a humidity of 85–90% for only 12 weeks. At the same time, it is important to observe indicators with an accuracy of 5–10%, which requires professional refrigeration chambers.

Problems during cultivation

Problems in forcing can arise if its rules .

1. The buds look like paper. Reduce the temperature and ventilate the greenhouse regularly.
2. Drooping flowers indicate too high a temperature.
3. Weak peduncles - night temperature exceeds daytime, lack of calcium.
4. Poor rooting of bulbs - too low humidity .
5. Bulbs rotting after planting - soil that is too warm.
6. Pasture only a leaf without a peduncle - the bulbs are planted too small.

How to grow tulips in a greenhouse?

After a predetermined cooling period, the bulbs grow shoots 6–8 cm long, pale due to lack of light.
At this moment, the boxes are moved to the greenhouse and the forcing begins directly. Growing and caring for tulips requires strict adherence to the rules of agricultural technology: To regulate the speed of plant development, the air temperature in the greenhouse is changed according to a certain algorithm:

• In the first three days, the air is heated to 12–14°C;
• When the sprouts turn green, the temperature is increased to 17–18°C;
• If flowers grow ahead of schedule, it is lowered to 14–15°C;
• To make tulips bloom earlier, the temperature is increased to 19–20°C;
• When coloring buds, the recommended temperature is 14–15°C;
• To obtain high-quality cuttings in winter, plants are illuminated with an intensity of 3500–4000 lux. The total duration of daylight is at least 12 hours;
• Tulips are watered daily from a watering can or using the drip method using water at a temperature of 10–12°C. Consumption is 20–25 l/m²;
• If a crust forms on the soil after watering, carefully loosen it so as not to damage the shallow roots;
• To supply fresh air, the greenhouse is ventilated daily. To do this, open the windows in the summer and turn on heated fans in the winter.

From the beginning of forcing, the plants are fed at least twice. The technology for growing tulips includes the following recommendations:

• Immediately after transferring the boxes to the greenhouse, the flowers are watered with a 0.3% solution of ammonium nitrate to stimulate growth;
• In the second and third weeks, plants are fertilized with a 0.3% solution of calcium nitrate to strengthen the flower stalks;
• Another method includes fertilizing in the first week with the complex composition Plantafol 20.20.20, and in the third week with Plantafol 10.54.10 fertilizer.

Making a planting plan

The tulip forcing plan is calculated in this way. We take the desired flowering date, and from it we subtract the number of weeks required to grow flowers inside the greenhouse. This is followed by a period of cold treatment of the plants.

There is another way to adjust the forcing plan to the desired date. Planting is planned for November, and when shoots of the required length appear, the boxes are moved inside a cold room (at about 0°C) and kept there for the required time.

But usually the planting plan begins in early January, when the bulbs are planted in 60x40 boxes. Four such boxes occupy exactly one square meter in the greenhouse. Each of them can accommodate 80 bulbs, so approximately 320 tulips can be harvested from a square meter of greenhouse. Based on the size of the greenhouse, you can determine how many flowers will eventually grow. It usually takes up to 17 weeks to grow a batch.

Diseases and pests of tulips

When growing tulips at home in winter, it is difficult to avoid the risk of spreading diseases. To reduce the risk, you need to treat the soil and planting material, and also spray the shoots with fungicides in a timely manner. Among the three dozen known flower diseases, the most common are:

• Gray rot. Infects stems, leaves, and bulbs. Brown spots covered with gray fluff form on them. The shoots become twisted, the flowers become ugly;
• Soft rot. The bulbs turn pink, become covered with red spots, and emit a pungent rotting smell. The plant dies from lack of nutrients;
• Root rot. The top of the bulb becomes brown, and the roots become watery and brittle. The plant lags behind in development and soon dies;
• Tyfulosis. The tulip grows curled, limp leaves of a pink hue. The buds do not set, and after the roots turn yellow, the plant dies;
• Fusarium. Whitish ulcers covered with mycelium fluff appear on the bulbs. Further, they become brown and begin to rot, emitting an unpleasant odor;
• Trichoderma. It mainly affects the roots. They become glassy and begin to rot. A dry gray border appears at the ends of the leaves;
• Variegation. Flower petals are covered with chaotic spots and stripes of a different shade. The virus does not destroy the plant, but causes degeneration of the variety;
• August disease. Leaves and stems become covered with brown spots, within which the tissue withers. Depressed brown areas appear on the bulb.

Tulips have fewer pests, but in the absence of regular treatment of plants with complex preparations, they can cause serious damage to the crop:

• Onion root mite. An insect 1 mm long with a transparent green or brown body. It gnaws passages in the soft tissues of the bulb, causing it to rot;
• Greenhouse aphid. A green insect up to 2 mm long with a rounded body. It feeds on the juice of soft tissues, causing the flower to lag in development and wilt;
• Onion hoverfly. Black shiny fly up to 8 mm long. Its larvae gnaw through the bottom of the bulb, which leads to the plant drying out;
• Purple owl. A 3 cm long butterfly with beige spotted wings. It lays eggs at the base of the stem, from which caterpillars emerge and gnaw tunnels in the tissue;
• Wireworm. The larva of the click beetle is yellow in color, up to 3 cm long. It feeds on soft roots and bulbs, causing their death;
• Slug. In damp weather or high humidity, it feeds on young shoots and tender leaves, gnawing holes in the bulbs.

Possible problems and their solutions

The tulip is an unpretentious flower, caring for it is not difficult, and problems with forcing can only arise if its rules are not followed.

Planting material cannot be transported or stored at unstable temperatures.

Even a slight deviation in air humidity in the greenhouse is unacceptable. Exceeding its level threatens plants with gray rot and leaf defects, and lowering it threatens plants with poor rooting.

Excessive watering leads to rotting of the rhizome and bulb, and a lack of water inhibits the development of the flower and contributes to the death of the roots.

If the buds are drooping and look gaunt, it means that the air temperature is too high and the greenhouse should be ventilated.

Pale edges and uneven coloring of the tulip indicate an excessively low temperature.

Weak buds indicate a lack of calcium or the night temperature exceeding the day temperature.

Bulb rotting is typical in excessively warm soil.

Blind inflorescences and lack of buds are a sign of insufficient cooling of the plantings.

How to cut and store tulips?

Depending on the variety of tulips, harvesting begins 20–30 days after moving the boxes with bulbs to the greenhouse. In order for the flowers to retain their presentation for as long as possible, during this procedure you need to follow some rules:

• Flowers are cut off at the moment the characteristic shade of the variety appears on the buds. If you wait until the coloring is complete, the tulips will quickly wither;
• The operation is carried out in the early morning, when the plants are filled with moisture. For better flower tone, it is advisable to set the temperature in the greenhouse to 12–13°C;
• The stem is separated from the bulb by making an oblique cut using a previously disinfected knife or pruning shears;
• Since the bulbs are not supposed to be reused, you can pull the plants out of the ground entirely. This allows you to increase the length of the stem.

If the entrepreneur has correctly calculated the timing of growing tulips in a greenhouse by March 8 or another date, the goods are immediately sent to retail outlets. But sometimes you have to store flowers until they are shipped to the buyer. How to do it:

• In water. Plants are placed vertically in large containers, immersing the stems by a third in cold water at a temperature of 4–5°C. To better preserve freshness, use a 0.1% solution of calcium nitrate or special preparations instead of water;
• Dry. Tulips are collected in bunches of 10–20 pieces, wrapped in paper and placed in cardboard boxes, which are stored in the refrigerator at a temperature of 1–2°C for a month. It should be dark here so that the stems do not bend.

Harvesting

The flower business largely depends on how well you harvest your crops. At the beginning of March, sprouts with green buds are pulled out of the ground and placed in boxes strictly vertically. Otherwise, the buds will stretch upward and bend the stem. You can also cut flowers, but pulling them out with a bulb is faster. In addition, this way the stem itself lengthens.

Cutting is carried out at a temperature of 12°C, when the buds are half-colored. They are taken out of the greenhouse early in the morning so that the buds have not yet bloomed. Collected flowers are stored at a temperature of 2-3°C. In this state, they can be stored cut for about a month. When a flower is said to be sold, the temperature gradually rises.

They are sorted into special boxes for sale. Sometimes the bulbs are not cut. Some retailers sell them straight up, with the bulbs attached. This sets their business apart, since such tulips are kept longer by customers. Although experienced flower growers insist that the bulb causes the flower to fade faster. Therefore, it is better to cut it, and only early in the morning, so that the tulip blooms by lunchtime.

How to sell tulips?

Many novice entrepreneurs believe that growing tulips for sale is doomed to success - after all, during the spring holidays, such flowers are literally snatched up from retail outlets. But in fact, there are quite a lot of competitors in this area, and therefore the freshest and highest quality product may remain unclaimed without proper efforts to organize its sales. How to sell tulips:

• It is worth agreeing on cooperation with the owners of flower stalls and pavilions. It is more convenient for them to receive goods delivered than to go to a wholesale warehouse to pick them up;
• To quickly sell a large batch of tulips, you should contact wholesale resellers. They will package the flowers and deliver them to the shops themselves;
• On holidays, you can sell goods to citizens directly from their cars or hire pensioners and arrange them with bouquets in underground passages;
• To constantly sell flowers and bouquets, you should create your own group on Instagram and VKontakte. However, you will have to hire a courier or negotiate with a delivery service;
• An enterprise website will become an analogue of a group in social networks. For wholesale clients, you need to place contact information on its pages, and for retail clients, an order form;
• You can register on the Internet on trading exchanges like or bulletin boards;
• You can take a ready-made business plan for a flower shop with calculations and open your own pavilion. This is beneficial if the farmer grows more than just tulips;
• Finally, some sell cut flowers directly from the greenhouse. Advertising can be placed on city forums, in newspapers, on billboards along the road.

Deadlines and rules for cutting

Pruning should be done obliquely, the length of the cut should be no more than 1.5 cm.

The best time for it is during the half-life of flowers, then the buds will gradually open over the next few days

By cutting off blossoming specimens, a businessman risks losing most of his profit, because they will quickly wither and no one will buy them.

It is better to cut early in the morning, while the tulip buds are closed, or in the late evening.

Attention! When cutting flowers, it is necessary to disinfect the blade with alcohol or vodka after cutting tulips of each color to avoid variegated plants.

It has become a fashionable trend to sell tulips dug up along with the bulb. Businessmen highly appreciated the idea and are actively applying it in practice, because this way the bouquet lasts much longer.

Business registration

When engaged on a serious scale in such types of business as growing peonies in open ground or forcing tulips in a greenhouse, an entrepreneur will sooner or later be of interest to the tax authorities. The law allows citizens to earn money from floriculture and private farming, but in order to avoid unnecessary questions, it is better to obtain official status by creating an individual entrepreneur or peasant farm. Among other things, this will allow the farmer not to give the state 13% of the proceeds in the form of personal income tax, but to use the Unified Agricultural Tax tax system with payment of 6% of the profit to the treasury. The following OKVED codes are suitable for growing roses and tulips in a greenhouse:

OKVED for growing tulips

Flowers, like other agricultural products, can be sold in bulk only if there are documents proving the legal origin of the product and its safety for consumers. In this case you need:

• Declaration of conformity of tulips to GOST R quality requirements;
• Certificate of inspection of products by the phytosanitary service;
• Quarantine safety certificate for exporting flowers to other regions.

How to legally register a business?

For beginning businessmen, the optimal form of doing business will be individual entrepreneurship.
In this case, taxes will be lower, and bureaucracy in collecting documents will be minimized. To register an individual entrepreneur with the Tax Inspectorate in your area, submit the appropriate application and a copy of your passport, and pay the state fee. In a maximum of 10 days you will receive a business registration certificate. At the same time, you will need to look for a suitable area for growing flowers - the supervisory authorities will require you to provide a lease agreement for the site. The matter is simplified if there is land in the property.

Equipment for growing tulips

In the southern regions of Russia and European countries with mild climates, farmers most often practice growing tulips in open ground.
But in this case, the harvest can be harvested only once, and at the beginning of May, when all the spring holidays are already behind us. Therefore, to force flowers all year round, you will have to build a greenhouse. The basis of such a design can be a metal frame covered with cellular polycarbonate 8–10 mm thick. To avoid soil freezing, the greenhouse must be installed on a shallow foundation, and to provide comfortable conditions for the plants, it must be equipped with additional systems. Their functions include:

• Heating. The greenhouse is heated using multi-row registers placed near the walls and between the beds. Hot water is supplied to them from a boiler running on gas or solid fuel. Pumps are used for forced circulation;
• Ventilation. In the warm season, vents in the walls of the greenhouse are used for this. In winter, ventilation is carried out by duct fans, which take cold air from the street through filters and drive it through water heat exchangers;
• Lighting. Growing tulips hydroponically or in boxes does not require a lot of light. The required level of illumination of 4000–5000 lux is provided by LED or sodium lamps installed above the beds at a height of 2 m;
• Shading. Since flowers do not tolerate heat well, on sunny days they are protected from light by translucent sliding curtains. Such an electrically or manually controlled mechanism is mounted under the ceiling of the greenhouse;
• Hydration. To maintain a given air humidity, fog generators are used that evaporate water using ultrasound. They can work automatically or manually, with indicators monitored by a hygrometer;
• Irrigation. To avoid erosion of the roots when growing tulips in a greenhouse for sale, drip systems are used, powered by large storage tanks. This also allows fertilizers to be dissolved in water.

The list of necessary components of these systems, as well as other equipment used in running a flower business, may look like this:

Equipment for growing tulips

Greenhouse with necessary equipment

A greenhouse is most often made of polycarbonate and costs around 10,000 rubles with a size of 3 by 8 m, it should be:

• Required area;
• Well-transmitted sunlight;
• Have electric lighting;
• Have an irrigation system;
• Available temperature control.

To cool the bulbs, refrigeration chambers with a temperature of 5 - 9 degrees are required. This is about another 14,000 rubles.

Irrigation system – 2 – 3 thousand rubles.

From 7 to 10 thousand electric heating;

We also need money for a fan.

Business plan for growing tulips

To open a tulip business, you need not only to buy equipment, but also to install it, connect it to utility networks, and carry out commissioning work.
Also, registration of an enterprise will require some investments: Video on the topic

Investing in a tulip farm

In addition, the farmer will have to periodically buy planting material, soil, fertilizers and pesticides. You can calculate the required number of bulbs as follows:

• If in a greenhouse 8 x 24 m we subtract the space for passages and equipment, a usable area of ​​105.6 m² remains;
• When planting bulbs with a diameter of 4 cm at intervals of 2 cm, 256 pieces will be needed to fill a square meter, and 27,000 pieces to fill the entire greenhouse;
• According to Dutch technology, cooling takes 12 weeks. With two germination chambers at his disposal, the farmer will receive a harvest every month and a half.

If we take into account other production and non-production costs, we can get the following list of regular expenses of the enterprise:

Annual expenses of a tulip farm

Growing bulbs yourself

To reduce the risks of purchasing the wrong consumables, it is quite possible to grow the bulbs yourself. For planting, a bulb is taken from open ground. As soon as the flower blooms, it is immediately cut off, and the bulb itself is dug out after the lower leaves turn yellow and the upper leaves are wilted. The optimal diameter of the bulb is 3.5 cm.

They are stored for about 6 weeks at a temperature not exceeding 20°C and humidity not exceeding 75%, until a pestle forms on them. Only under such conditions will a flower form inside. At the initial stage, storage in warmer conditions is allowed, but the bulbs must be cooled before planting.

Profitability of growing tulips

Is growing flowers in a greenhouse profitable as a business? If a farmer collects 27,000 buds every month and a half, he will receive 216 thousand tulips in a year. Half of them can be sold as usual, and the other can be prepared specially for the New Year, February 14, March 8 and May 1, when prices will almost double:

Proceeds from the sale of tulips

Comparing revenues with expenses, we can assume that the tulip flower business will have good profitability. Indeed, if you start a greenhouse at the beginning of September, the initial investment will pay off even before the May holidays:

Profitability of growing tulips

Main features of our business

I will say right away that we started our business right away with large volumes - we grew a little over 40,000 tulips. To do this we had to install large greenhouses. If your initial appetites are smaller, then you won’t need a large starting capital. Please note that to force 2,000 bulbs you will have to build a greenhouse with an area of ​​about 40 m2 - the territory of almost any household plot is quite suitable for this. A significant advantage of this is that to start running such a business you do not have to register it with the tax office. In our case, it all started on a large scale and we had to rent a large plot of land to conduct business, which we had to register.

However, I would like to immediately note that if a business is not registered, there is no possibility of selling goods to large commercial organizations. Actually, if your initial production volume is small, then this is not a problem at all.

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