Okay…so maybe I should have asked before dug them all up, but the deed is done. I want to either rearrange them in the bed they were in or move them to another bed.
Can I plant them now and they’ll stay asleep until next spring?
Some of them got cut in half by the shovel. Will those pieces sprout a flower or do I have to pitch those?
If I can’t plant them until Fall, how do I store them?
Thanks for your help!!
Tulips are extremely iffy about coming back, so they may or may not, even if undisturbed. That said: go ahead and replant now. The ones cut in half won’t come back; got ahead and add them to your compost heap.
Thanks, doll! I’m not a serious gardener, but I toss all my yard waste over the hill to the part of our plot that we don’t live on. Sometimes things actually sprout down there!
If you always throw to the same spot, and have been for a while, go check out the bottom of that mound sometime. You may find out that it’s turned to nice, rich soil, which you can either use for potting houseplants or spread on your flowerbeds.
Yes, I should roll down the hill and dig up some dirt. It’s a heavily wooded, damp area and I know all the years of leaves falling have left me some really great soil. It’s basically untouched by anything but rain and deer hooves. Hmmm…I’m thinking of digging a new flower bed now!
Don’t plant them now. Better to store them. Store in dry ventilated area.
Plant in fall. Wherever you plant them, mix some bone meal into the soil, or you could try crushed seashells. This may have a pretty dramatic effect over the next 2-3 years - much better production. Bulbs do best in a well drained soil - most bulb farms in Holland (the country, not the town) are on very sandy soil, heavily fertilized.
Before you store the bulbs, make sure they’re dry, and clean the dirt off them.
You should even plant the little bulbs, they will come up 2-3 years from now if the soil condition is right. Bulbs with small nicks will come up, but bulbs cut in half are pretty much lost.
Before you plant them, make sure to discard any bulbs that are not firm - they may have started to rot.
Best time to dig up bulbs is after the leaves have withered.
The leaves weren’t exactly dried and withered, but they were yellow and flimsy. Is that withered enough?
Tulips typically originate from fairly arid mediterranean areas with a short, wet spring and a long, hot dry summer; emulating these conditions will enable them to thrive - in most cases, this treatment will consist of:
-providing sharp drainage around and under the bulbs, so that they are not wet for prolonged periods
-planting in a sunny position, to give them a good ‘bake’, or…
-…lifting them a few weeks after flowering and storing in a dark, dry place, then replanting in the autumn.
Tulips can actually be propagated by cutting the bulbs into pieces - as long as each piece has a section of the basal plate (the corky bit that the roots come out of), and as long as the cut surface doesn’t get infected, it will grow into a new plant. You could dust the cut bulbs with fungicide, leave them to dry in a dark place, then replant them.
I have gravel at the bottom of the boxed-off areas where I plant these. They’ve come back (and apparently multiplied) for many years, so I think I was doing that part right.