On Labour Day, the 22nd annual Tulip Day invited visitors to take a van tour or drive themselves through the Edendale tulip fields, with the vans driven by the very workers who tend the crop. The flowers are what people come to see. For the growers, though, the real crop is underground, and with about 10 weeks to go until harvest, the news from the paddocks is better than a wet, hail-battered Southland spring might suggest.
Triflor, the Dutch-owned company that grows millions of bulbs over more than 100 hectares around Edendale, has planted 120 hectares this season, up from about 110 hectares last year. If the weather plays fair it expects to export about 70 million bulbs next May, against roughly 65 million sent offshore this May, with another 1.5 million sold within New Zealand. That makes it one of eastern Southland's more colourful export earners, and one that depends heavily on the sky.
Crop manager Mark Jongejan told Farmers Weekly the season had not started kindly. "The start of our 2026 season is exceptionally wet making field operations hard to plan," he said. "We also again suffered some hail damage this year."
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Hail is the worry that never goes away. "Hail is always the make or break for the season," Jongejan said. Last year brought a typical damp spring and more hail than usual, yet a mild finish meant the crop still came in at an average yield. This year he is cautiously more optimistic. "At the moment the crop is heading for an above average yield – still 10 weeks until harvest so we will see how that unfolds."
The rhythm of a bulb year runs almost opposite to the farming calendar around it. Bulbs go into the ground in May and June, sit dormant from June to August, and are lifted in December and January before being processed for export from May. Triflor does not farm the same ground year after year; it leases paddocks from local farmers so the bulbs move to fresh soil on an eight-year rotation, and Jongejan was keen to thank those farmers for it.
Drought is less of a fear than it might be, because the company has enough irrigation to cover a dry spell. Heat is a different matter. Jongejan said high temperatures in late spring could still knock yields back, so the next few weeks will be watched closely. He credited the team with putting in a big effort to deal with whatever problems came up, and said the crop was shaping up well for next year's export.
Asked how this season stacked up against recent ones, he gave an answer that plenty of southern farmers will recognise. "Very similar, Southland will get you down but it won't let you down."
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