Every year, greenhouse growers make their mortgage note selling Easter lilies Lilium longiflorum. In an era where people so often want the new shiny thing, it is one of the longest running and most popular crops in greenhouse production history. Growers who know how to produce this crop consistently are highly sought after in the trade.

Making an Easter lily bloom on Easter weekend takes an enormous amount of planning and good horticultural skills. It takes about 23 weeks from initial potting to Easter for a greenhouse to produce a fully bloomed Easter lily. This includes a 3-week period for root development, 6 weeks of cooling to initiate bud development, and then 14 weeks of 'forcing' in the greenhouse to mature the plant and flowers. If you mess up somewhere along the way your crop may bloom too early or too late and be worthless.

That is a problem for greenhouse producers, not for home gardeners. For us regular gardeners, we can simply buy these beautiful flowering plants in pots at florists around Easter weekend. The really great part is that we can then plant the flowers outdoors and they will come back each year. However, they will bloom later in the summer, not around Easter.

Easter lily is a tall plant in the landscape reaching up to four feet in height. The trumpet shaped white flowers emerge at the top of the plant. If you remove the yellow anthers (pollen organs) then you can increase bloom time. Easter lilies need little care, just a shot of Miracle Gro annually will keep them producing flowers for you for years to come!