The Flower Fields

The Sunday afternoon for us was at The Flower Fields in Carlsbad. An amazing place! Carlsbad Ranch has 50+ acres fields of flowers near the cost. Each spring this ranch turns into a hillside painted rainbow with bright colors made from millions of flowers. They are in full bloom now. It is a great time to go if you like flowers.







There was a Sweet Pea flower Maze there. The flowers had a sweet fragrance. There were purple, pink and white Sweet Pea flowers in the maze. We had fun going through it. There was also tractors available for those that prefered a tractor ride around the field.























There is only one kind of flower grown here. It is called the Tecolote Giant Ranunculus (also known as Persian Buttercup), which is one of the finest strains of ranunculus plants in the world. This flower is native of Asia Minor and is a member of the buttercup family.

Only 1-2% of the flowers here are sold. That's a little over 3 million flowers. They primarily grow these flowers to harvest the bulbs. The goal is to harvest 200,000 bulbs per acre. That would be 12 million bulbs! The bulbs are sold to nurseries and garden centers across the country.

The flowers are left to die and produce seed for replanting in these same fields for the next season. They feel that by allowing the plant to complete its lifecycle, it helps to produce a superior bulb crop.

A close look of the flowers that grows here.



It was fun going in the flower field! We made friends with a Mexican that was working in the field there and he let us go in the flower field and took this picture for us.




A section of the field was being worked on. Here you can see bunches of bulbs being picked and put in containers getting them ready to sent to garden centers.

I am not really driving this tractor