Tuberose flowering and flower harvest

You should start seeing flower spikes forming on your tuberoses around 70-80 days after planting.  The spikes grow rapidly, and 2-3 weeks later, you’ll have the first flower buds opening. In our zone 7b, the main crop blooms the last week in July,.

Tuberose flowers open at night, and they are most fragrant in the morning.

You may have a few small stems that open way ahead of the others.  We’re not sure why this happens but it does. The large majority of your flowers will mature at about the same time and bloom within a week or two of each other.  There will be a few later blooms as well, all the way until frost.  But you’ll get probably 90 percent of your flowers in a short two-week time frame.

If you are going to cut your stems to take inside and enjoy, cut them the first morning that they have two to three flowers open.  They will continue to open on up the stem, and the bottom flowers will wither.  Just pull the withered ones off to keep them looking nice.

As with most flowers, they will last longer if you use a floral preservative in the water.  If you don’t have any, change the water every third day.

They will provide wonderful beauty and  fragrance in your home or office  for 6-8 days.

If you are going to harvest individual flowers for either eating or making fragrances, pick them in the morning as early as possible.  This is when the most oil and moisture content is in the flowers.