For the last 30 years I have tried to answer questions about tulips, particularly about why you have beautiful tulips the first spring after you plant them, then the next year they don't look too great. I have experienced this frustration myself when I planted 200 tulips on either side of my front sidewalk. They were fabulous that first spring, and then the second year about 100 of them bloomed. I was so mad because it was a lot of work planting 200 tulips!! The third or fourth year I attempted to dig them all up. Now I have a dozen or so sporadic red tulips that still pop up in the spring. Grrrrr.
So, today, I ran across the most concise explanation of why the tulip thing just doesn't work out too well. This explains why the big landscapers plant hundreds of tulips in the fall and then they dig them all back up after they are through blooming in the spring and they plant annuals in their places. They throw away the tulip bulbs!!! You just have to look at this whole thing like you look at planting annuals in the spring. You get to do the work and spend the money in the fall and enjoy the fruits of your labors in the spring. Then you have some more work in the spring, replacing the bulbs with annuals.
Why don't tulips come back?
The tulip bulbs that you buy have been raised in sandy Dutch soil and fertilized to perfection.
When they bloomed in the spring, the flowers were cut off as soon as they opened so they didn't steal much energy from the bulb.
The leaves were allowed to grow for six weeks in the cool Dutch weather.
After the bulbs went dormant in early summer, they were dug and stored in a climate controlled warehouse that mimics a long, hot, bone dry summer in the mountains of Central Asia, which is where most tulips are native.
All this TLC produces the perfect flowering size bulb to sell.
As you can guess, conditions are not that favorable in our soil and our weather!
The bulbs that we plant will split into smaller bulbs and it takes years for those to grow into big enough bulbs to bloom. Many of our bulbs will rot in our heavy wet soils. This why our tulip display dwindles down to nothing impressive.
Tulips that will bloom the best for us are Darwin Hybrids, Fosterianas, and wild, or, specie tulips, but none are guaranteed to be perennial.
My suggestion to gardeners is to create a bed in your landscaping that is reserved for tulip planting in the fall, blooms in the spring. Don't plant your tulips in beds with perennials or shrubs that you have to dig around, possibly injuring them. After you dig the bulbs in late spring, replace them with your favorite annual, such as petunias, marigolds, or vincas. Then enjoy the color until frost, then dig up the annuals and plant new bulbs.
A few hours on a Saturday, twice a year, and you've got blooms your neighbors will be jealous of!!
So, with all this information, you have to ask yourself, "Why would I go to all the trouble to plant tulips bulbs, just to have to dig them up in the spring???? And, do it all over again next year???
You could spend $50 to $100 on one hundred or two hundred bulbs. Do you spend that much on a Reds baseball game, or a concert, or UK football tickets? That's money spent on something that lasts a few hours. Spend that amount on tulip bulbs and you will get a week or two, depending on the weather at the time, of pure enjoyment. A riot of colorful flowers is proven to lift your spirits and the spirits of everyone who sees your flowers. I like the sound of that after a long, gloomy winter, and a wet, cool spring! Nothing says Happy Spring! like a bed of tulips in full bloom!!
For a lot of fantastic information about tulips and other bulbs, go to www.colorblends.com. This information I have shared comes from their current catalog.
