Most bulbs can be left underground all year or stored inside after they've bloomed. After your bulbs have flowered, don't remove their leaves while they're still green; always let the foliage die back on its own. Bulbs gain their strength from their foliage, helping them grow and produce new flowers next year.
Do I need to dig up my bulbs or can I leave them in the ground? Spring-blooming bulbs that are winter hardy, such as tulips, daffodils and crocus, can be left right in the ground. Summer bulbs such as dahlias, tuberous begonias and calla lilies, will not survive cold winters.
When their foliage wilts in the summer or fall, you can trim away some of the dead plant matter, but leave the bulbs in the ground to bloom next spring. Some gardeners dig up hardy bulbs anyway, to divide or replace overcrowded bulbs for maximum yield.
Caring for hardy bulbs
These bulbs are perennial and thus left in the ground year after year. With good conditions, they will bloom every spring. Every three to four years, hardy bulbs should be dug up in the fall, divided and replanted. Rotting or dried up bulbs should be composted.
There is no real reason to dig up tulips bulbs each year, or at all. Most gardeners leave their bulbs in the ground where they were originally planted, and, are left to rebloom. Sometimes gardeners will dig up tulip bulbs but only when the plants seem to have offered fewer flowers.
While you do not need to dig and divide your tulips every year; they should be dug up at least 3-4 years if planted in the ground. If you are not digging them up yearly, make sure they are not in an area of the yard where they will be watered all summer. Too much water over the summer will rot/kill your bulbs.
Most bulbs can be stored for up to a year, but tend to perform best when planted within six months of lifting. For tender bulbs, be sure to plant in the spring following the fall in which they were lifted-they will likely not have enough energy to survive past the warm season and into the following year.
Place the bulbs in a paper bag in the refrigerator. Be sure that the refrigerator is set at a temperature between 35°F and 50°F. Also, rid the refrigerator of any fruit (particularly apples) as these produce a plant hormone called “ethylene” when ripening which will cause flower bulbs to rot.
Yes! The seeds of tulips are naturally spread (asexual reproduction) with little human intervention. After spreading, they evolve as bulbs and eventually go on to become a part of the flower.
Many bulbs readily multiply by producing offsets without any help from the gardener. But as well as taking advantage of this, it is quite simple to grow more of your favourite bulbs using just a few other techniques, including scaling, bulbils, seed and division.
Bulbs that you leave in the ground once they've stopped blooming can start growing their new root systems as early as mid-August. Some varieties also use this period to multiply. They grow more bulbs out of one and prepare themselves to give you an even more impressive flower show come spring.
After those bulbs finish flowering many wonder if it's possible to place the plants in the soil so they will bloom next year. The short answer is yes, but some of these bulbs will return better than others. Tulips and hyacinths, for example, always look their best the first spring after planting.
Planting bulbs too deep can result in bulb rot and a bit of a delay in spring growth. In general, plant bulbs a depth 2-3 times their vertical diameter.
I grow many of these as potted plants so that they can be easily overwintered by hauling them inside, cutting back the foliage, letting the pots dry out to simulate the dry season conditions of their native lands, and storing them out of the sun in a cool, dry spot where they will not freeze.
Bulbs will easily grow through 4 inches (10 cm) or even more of mulch as if it weren't there. Bulbs do this in the wild too, pushing their way up into the light, first through the soil, then the plant litter that covers the ground. Perennials do just the same thing, by the way.
The trick to ensuring bulbs are safe and happy all winter long is to keep them uniformly cool. So after you plant, it's valuable to put mulch on top of the soil. Not only does mulch keep the bulbs uniformly cool, but it also inhibits weed seeds by cutting off the light that encourages germination.
Tulip bulbs should be planted in the fall. The soil needs to have cooled off from the summer growing season before you plant, which could mean September in cold climates (zones 3 to 5), October in transitional climates (zones 6 to 7), and November or December in warm climates (zones 8 to 9).
Dig one large planting hole to place 3, 5, or 7 bulbs in (depending on the type of bulb). Generally, with tulips the hole should be 12″ in diameter and 5 bulbs can be planted in it. They will be spaced closer than what the package says.
(Small, weak tulip bulbs will likely never bloom again.) Plant new tulip bulbs in the fall. While most modern tulip cultivars bloom well for three to five years, some tulip types (classes) bloom well over a longer period.
Let the bulbs cure for a few days in a well-ventilated place on old newspapers or cardboard, then store them in a cool, dark place. Because the bulbs need a consistent cool temperature, for most home gardeners, this place is the refrigerator.
But as long as the ground is workable, you can plant bulbs! This means that you can plant bulbs as late as January – if you can dig a hole deep enough to plant. Plant tulips and daffodils as late as the end of January! This way, they'll develop roots through the spring, and bloom later than usual.
Outsmart Old Man Winter by saving bulbs of frost-tender plants over winter and planting them again next spring. It's not a tough job, and you don't need any special knowledge or tools to succeed. Use this technique with plants that aren't winter hardy in your zone.