Experiment: Planting bulbs with only 5 weeks of cold treatment. Will the tulips grow and bloom without the required cold treatment?

Some History You can follow the history of Louisiana hurricanes through the Journey North gardens of teacher Pam Masters. Since 2003, her classes have participated in the test garden project, with the exception of the years hurricanes made it difficult. Last fall, after a year off, she forgot to order bulbs in time to give them the required chilling before planting. Her students decided to plant their garden as an experiment to see how it would grow.

Experimental Garden Locations

Planting date: January 9, 2012
"Our second grade students planted 75 Red Emperor tulips. Here's pictures of us planning our tulips."

Emerging date: January 23, 2012
"Today, our tulips started to emerge. We planted 75 bulbs, and 6 of them have started to emerge. We did notice that one of the Journey North gardens in Texas had bulbs emerge today. We are interested in finding out if they put theirs in the refrigerator or not. "

Journal Questions:

• How many days between planting and emerging?
• Why is this considered an experimental garden and not an official test garden?
• With this shorter bulb chilling time, how do you think will these tulips grow?
• What data would you collect to compare this garden with gardens grown in the past at Juban Parc Elementary?