>> "J Schwanke's Life in Bloom" is brought to you by... Albertsons Companies... with additional support from the following... CalFlowers... Dollar Tree... Sunshine Bouquet.

♪ ♪ >> Today on "Life in Bloom," it's all about lilies.

These flowers, derived from bulbs, provide beautiful, bountiful blooms when cared for properly.

We'll visit a farm that grows them... show you some fun and easy arrangements... and I'll make a festive lily hors d'oeuvre.

♪ ♪ ♪ I'm J Schwanke.

Welcome to "Life in Bloom."

Lilies have always been an important part of my life.

I was born on my grandma's birthday, and her name was Lily Green.

So, lilies and I go way back.

I've always enjoyed lilies of all different kinds.

As a fourth-generation florist, my family grew thousands of lilies.

Yes, thousands of them -- Easter lilies for the holidays.

And I used to arrange all different sorts of lilies in arrangements for just about any occasion.

My grandfather, "Carnation" Joe Green, created this little device.

It's called a lily-pollen picker.

And he fabricated it so you could get inside the bloom and pluck the lily pollen just when it opened, so it wouldn't stain a tablecloth or a dress.

There's so much to learn about lilies, and that's what we do best at "Life in Bloom" -- learn more about flowers.

♪ ♪ The structure of these lilies makes them easy to arrange.

In ikebana, we have three or four major placements.

Each one of these stems has three or four lilies.

I start with a shorter vase, placing several stems together, but, also, I have one stem that just has buds.

I'll add that to this arrangement.

That one bud stem will be the future flowers for this arrangement.

♪ I'm using taller stems in a vase with a manzanita branch attached to it.

The manzanita branch acts as a structure, so I can place the stems between them.

As the lilies open up, they'll hold themselves in place against the manzanita branch.

♪ I like a skinny, tapered vase because I can take two blossoms and put them together.

The blossoms themselves actually hold them upright, and they'll sit off to one side, giving me a contemporary look in this narrow vase.

I have one stem left.

I'll cut that lily short but add the bud into a low tray with rocks.

It's amazing because one blossom can change the ambiance of an entire room.

Now I have four beautiful, different arrangements I can place throughout the house.

♪ ♪ Let's learn a bit more about lilies and how they grow.

My good friend Benno is an expert when it comes to growing lilies.

I recently visited him to learn more about commercial lily production.

So, Benno, how did you get started in the flower business?

>> I actually grew up on my father's bulb farm in the Netherlands as a kid.

He had a bulb farm.

He didn't grow cut flowers, but he grew bulbs for bulb production.

And so, I grew up in this environment, where everything was done by hand, lots of hard labor.

We were actually plowing in our fields with horses.

My father bought the first tractor when I was 15 years old.

I went to an horticultural school in the Netherlands.

When I was 16, I graduated, and then I started full-time on my father's farm.

>> So, how many stems of lilies do you grow per week here?

>> On an average, about 200,000 to 300,000 per week.

So, we actually harvest, then, that number each week.

>> So, you talk about this lily trick.

Can you share that with us, or is it still a secret?

>> No, no, no, there is no secret.

>> Okay.

>> It is actually, what is, the whole trick is that after harvesting bulbs from the fields, and that most of them are harvested in the Netherlands, and they harvest those bulbs in October, November, December.

Then, the trick is to get them into storage in the right temperature, and then, at the sort of point when the bulbs are ready for freezing, then they are packed in peat moss, with plastic around it, and then you freeze the bulbs.

And if you do that at the right time, you freeze it in at the right time, and you keep it at that temperature year-round, then you are able to ship those bulbs year-round for cut-flower production.

And so, the trick is to store those bulbs in the right environment.

Then, at the sort of point, ship them out on a weekly basis so you can have flowers year-round.

♪ >> And this soil is the best soil?

>> You know, I will show you.

>> Okay.

>> This soil -- and that is kind of interesting -- this soil is the sandy soil from the ocean.

>> Okay.

>> And kind of interesting enough, when I was growing up as a little boy... >> Right.

>> ...I grew up in this soil.

>> Oh!

>> About the same.

>> Wow!

In the Netherlands?

>> In the Netherlands.

We were about 3 miles from the North Sea.

>> Okay.

>> Here, we are 3 miles from the Pacific Ocean.

>> Right.

>> And this soil is just as perfect as it can be because it is so nice and sandy.

You see, even when I have it in my hands... >> Oh, yeah.

>> ...it's clean.

>> Right.

Wow.

>> So, it drains really well.

It grows really well.

We get very good stems out of this, much stronger than you put it in trays... >> Right.

>> ...in peat moss.

This is the best that you can grow cut flowers.

♪ >> So, and they're going through here, and they're picking and choosing?

>> Yeah, they are picking out the ones that are ready to go.

And, as you can see, they are pretty darn good.

>> They're fast.

>> They're pretty fast.

>> So, what's the tool they're using?

>> Just a knife, a knife on the bottom.

>> On the bottom.

>> Yeah.

And so, they kind of chop it off on the bottom.

>> Is that like the grape hook that they use in the wine country?

>> Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> One thing I want to mention to everybody because everybody's gonna look at this, and they're gonna say, "Now, there's color here."

>> Yeah.

>> But there's no open blossom.

>> No, no, and that is actually -- we should not ship it out open.

>> Right.

>> Because we lie to the final customer if the full, let's say, length of the flowering... >> Exactly.

>> ...of the lily that we ship out.

So, we ship it out in a tight stage.

It's going in a pretty cool truck.

It's going to the final customer in their cooler, and then they are going to send it out to whoever is the final customer.

And then they're supposed to get it also somewhat in this stage.

>> Right.

>> So, when they put it in a vase, then they have the full exposure.

>> It opens up.

Yeah.

>> Yeah, it opens up in front of their eyes.

>> And then they get the full enjoyment.

♪ ♪ So, there's really nothing better than having lilies in a garden.

I planted these last year, after I had an excursion to California.

And I put them in the ground when I came back, and they came up last year, and they came up this year.

So, that's the cool thing about lilies is that they'll come back year after year.

And they don't need a lot of care.

They're just gonna be beautiful.

And they bloom at different times in the garden, too, which is really wonderful.

I love that.

So, we're planting two different kinds of lilies today.

These are an Oriental lily, and these are an L.A. hybrid.

These are gonna have bigger blooms.

Stargazer lilies is what you might think about when you think about an Oriental lily.

This variety's called "Sorbonne."

And these are a pink L.A. hybrid, which is a smaller-type lily, and they'll look great together.

I've prepared the soil simply by digging it up.

We've got good drainage inside here.

They like that.

And we're gonna go ahead and plant them in here.

The other thing that's important is, you'll notice that they've started to have a little bit of a sprout on them.

So, we don't want to bury that completely when we're planting in the ground.

We also want to remember that the roots go down, and the stem goes up.

So, don't plant it this way.

You got to plant it this way.

Sometimes, when you get your bulb, you may not have this little bit of stem showing.

So, always look for the point on top and the roots on the bottom when you're planting.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ We have our hole, and we dug it down about this far.

We've placed our lilies in there.

Now, I've grouped them together, because, remember.

A lily stem comes up by itself.

It's not gonna have more than one plant coming off there.

So, we want a nice, little cluster, like we have here.

We'll have that same cluster here, where each one of these will grow up, and they'll be together.

You can plant them further apart if you wanted to, but I like to make impact when I'm planting in the garden.

And that gives me a big pop of color in certain areas.

Now we'll cover them up.

♪ ♪ ♪ You'll see that they're just peeking out of the soil, and they're gonna grow pretty quickly.

We'll actually see them all be up in about a day or so.

But you want to water them in, and we want to mark them so that we don't step on it or disturb them until they get going.

And, soon enough, we'll have beautiful lilies in our garden.

♪ ♪ You're probably familiar with day lilies.

They're a big part of landscaping today.

And it's interesting because they're not actually lilies.

This variety, which is the wild, orange day lily that we're all used to seeing, has been a part of American history.

It was actually carried on wagon trains across the United States and planted as people went along, although they're not native to America.

They're actually native to Asia.

The interesting about them is that they don't come from a bulb.

They come from a fleshy root core, and that's what makes them not lilies.

You're familiar with how a lily would grow up one single stem with a lily at the top and the leaves.

The foliage of the day lilies stays low, and then these big spikes come up.

They call them "scapes," much like garlic.

And then they have the individual blooms.

Now, what's interesting is the lily bud only lasts for a day.

So, they're not good for a cut flower.

But every single part of the day-lily plant is edible.

We'll use those later on in a segment and show you how we can use the blooms, the most popular part, to fix something we could eat.

The ones that we're gonna cook with I've governed here in the yard so that I can make sure that they're pesticide-free and they're completely organic.

That's something that you'll want to think about if you're gonna cook with them.

In Holland, they call these "ditch lilies" because they literally grow in the ditches.

And once they're established in the ground, there's little you can do to kill them.

And you can split them up and plant them in different areas if you want, but if you're gonna do that, get ready for some hard work.

You've got to unearth the whole root ball and cut it into pieces, and then it can be passed around.

That's why it was great to carry on the covered wagons across the United States.

Typically, day lilies don't get this tall, but I've got them planted in a shady spot.

So, they'll stretch a little bit more.

Day lilies are so popular in landscape because they're super-easy to care for.

You really literally can plant them and forget about them.

They've been known to be unearthed and live for months because of the moisture that's held inside the root ball.

So, it's a great addition to the garden because it's easy, and it's beautiful.

♪ ♪ Lilium is a genus of herbaceous flowering plants growing from bulbs, all with large, prominent flowers, commonly known as "lilies."

Many other plants have "lily" in their common name but are not related to true lilies.

The flowers are large, often fragrant, and come in a wide range of colors.

Some lily species are poisonous to cats.

So, make sure they do not have access to lilies.

The true lilies are perennial plants with leafy stems, scaly bulbs, usually narrow leaves, and solitary or clustered flowers.

In Asia Minor, during the second millennium B.C., the bulb of the Madonna lily was cultivated for use in medicinal ointment.

Lilies are among the oldest cultivated plants.

♪ ♪ We'll create a lily topiary where we actually use the stems and the lilies themselves as the top of the topiary.

♪ Start with a block of foam.

Place it down inside our container so that it falls below the edge of the container itself.

♪ ♪ ♪ Then, we'll fill in with carnations around the outside of the container.

♪ ♪ ♪ My great-grandparents started our family business in 1896.

Then, my grandparents took over.

My grandfather was called "Carnation" Joe Green, and he felt he was a florist 24 hours a day because he wore a red carnation every day and slept with his Lily at night.

My grandmother's name was Lily.

And so, it was always a fun story he would share and tell people.

And this arrangement -- it has lilies and carnations -- makes me think about them.

We're cutting our lilies off of the stem and using the stem as a support system in the middle of the arrangement.

We're driving those stems all the way down to the bottom of the container.

And we'll remove our pollen as we're working with our lilies.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ I'll also use my carnation stems to fill in between the lily stems.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Next, I'll go back in and trim down some of the carnation stems.

But I'm leaving the nice, strong lily stems in the center.

♪ ♪ Then we'll use a block of caged foam... and push the lily stems all the way through so that they sit on top of the carnation stems.

Trim those off.

♪ ♪ Now we can add our lilies.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ I've got a special treat today with rose lilies.

This lily is a special cultivar that has several layers of petals to the flower itself.

And you'll also notice that there's no stamen and no pollen in the center of them.

We'll use those to fill in between these.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ A beautiful topiary, created with beautiful blossoms, flowering blossoms.

"Carnation" Joe and Lily?

They'd be proud.

♪ ♪ Day lilies from the garden can be made into a floral appetizer.

I'll show you how easy it is to do.

We're using day lilies, and we picked them this morning.

When you start to pick them, they're gonna start to fade right away.

So, I took water with me, and I kept them in water until we're ready.

Then, we're gonna pull out the stamen and the anthers from the middle of the flower.

Just like in flower arrangements, day lilies are only good for one day.

So, we'll want to pick these and make our appetizer right away.

Day lilies really aren't lilies.

And, thus, the entire plant is edible.

So, you can't do this with regular lilies.

I grew these outside my own garden.

So, I know they're pesticide-free and have been completely organic.

We're gonna stuff the day lilies using goat cheese and Parmesan cheese with a few herbs.

And then we're gonna tie them shut and batter them and fry them up.

We'll need to make our batter, which is made with flour, a little bit of milk, and some dark ale.

♪ ♪ ♪ Now we'll mix together our goat cheese and our shredded Parmesan cheese and our herbs.

I just use an herb mixture.

We want this to be fairly soft so that it's easy to stuff inside the lilies.

Then we'll need some cotton twine.

I have cotton twine like this, and what I did was, I unraveled it so I have nice, thin, little pieces that I can use to tie our lilies shut.

So, now we'll stuff our goat cheese down inside our lily blossoms.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Now we use our string, and we'll tie our blossoms shut.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ So, now we'll dip these in our beer batter, and then we'll fry them in coconut oil.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ And here's our fried day-lily blossoms.

So, I've left the strings on.

It's kind of like the tail of a shrimp so you have something to hold onto.

And you can throw it away after you bite off the day-lily blossom.

♪ Mmm.

They're delicious.

♪ ♪ Many people can get frustrated if they get lily pollen on their clothing.

But here's a secret trick.

Lily pollen is photosensitive.

So, if you happen to get pollen on your clothing or a tablecloth, simply lie it in direct sunlight for two to three hours, and the pollen will magically disappear.

♪ We hope you've enjoyed this episode, devoted to the lily.

They've always been a favorite of mine, with their big, beautiful trump of blooms, their wide selection of color, and, of course, watching them open from bud to full bloom.

For "Life in Bloom," I'm J Schwanke.

So, Benno, why be a flower farmer and not, like, run a department store or a pharmacy or be a lawyer or dentist or something?

>> I love this question, J.

Flowers is -- you have to have a passion for flowers, to grow up in this environment.

What I like about flowers is that wherever you ship it to, wherever it ends up, it makes people smile.

You have to have, let's say, the passion for it but also the stomach for it sometimes, because it is not always easy.

But to know that it ends up at someone's home, someone's house, that people appreciate the flowers, that, to me, is just a wonderful thing to know.

>> "J Schwanke's Life in Bloom" is filmed in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

>> "J Schwanke's Life in Bloom" is brought to you by... Albertsons Companies... with additional support from the following... CalFlowers... Dollar Tree... Sunshine Bouquet.

♪ Closed-caption funding provided by Holland America Flowers.

♪ For everything flowers, recipes, projects, and more information, visit ubloom.com.

♪