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igenlodeThe tulips have finally died down, more or less, and I can now attempt to lift and store them. As suspected, this involved uprooting practically everything else in the trough, including the garlic, a lot of field poppies on the point of flowering, a couple of self-sown marigolds, and what was either camomile or love-in-a-mist, as well as the usual chickweed and forget-me-nots. (Forget-me-nots are a pretty blue, but the flowers are pretty tiny compared with the size of the plant, and unlike the speedwell and ivy-leafed toadflax (also uprooted in the process while in full flower) the plants themselves have quite large and dominant rosettes of leaves that can easily take over a pot entirely.)
Where the foliage had died down entirely it was actually pretty hard to *find* the bulbs, given that they had been planted four inches deep and were in the middle of a mass of roots! Hence the general destruction... I think the ones at the end of the trough may have been lifted too early, as their foliage, although yellowed, hadn't entirely dried out and fallen off to leave behind a neat pointed bulb but still had a fleshy stem attached. However, I couldn't very well leave them in the earth while everything else was being pulled up around them, and don't want to have to do this twice anyhow.
I think the ideal moment to lift the bulbs is when they still have foliage attached, so that you can *find* them more easily, but when it is on the point of dropping off. Unfortunately they don't all reach this stage at the same time.
I'm really not sure why you are supposed to lift them anyway -- presumably in order to mimic the baking hot dry summers of their native habitat, and prevent the bulbs from getting waterlogged? Everything in the trough was worryingly dry, as has been the case with all the plants I've repotted, despite twice-daily watering, which is obviously barely enough to keep them from wilting -- it shows how long it has been since we had any meaningful rain.
However the bulbs were clearly happy, as they have put out a lot of plump little offshoots, as shown in the photo; even the one at the end which barely grew and had a puny flower has survived in good health, somewhat to my surprise. The instructions on the packet say "Do not keep the small offshoots as they will not flower", but in some cases it's hard to tell what is the 'offshoot' and what is the main bulb; they appear to have cloved-up like garlic! (Apparently they will bloom, as one would expect from a plant that naturally propagates itself, but not for several years until they reach maturity. However I really don't want any more tulips....)
Where the foliage had died down entirely it was actually pretty hard to *find* the bulbs, given that they had been planted four inches deep and were in the middle of a mass of roots! Hence the general destruction... I think the ones at the end of the trough may have been lifted too early, as their foliage, although yellowed, hadn't entirely dried out and fallen off to leave behind a neat pointed bulb but still had a fleshy stem attached. However, I couldn't very well leave them in the earth while everything else was being pulled up around them, and don't want to have to do this twice anyhow.
I think the ideal moment to lift the bulbs is when they still have foliage attached, so that you can *find* them more easily, but when it is on the point of dropping off. Unfortunately they don't all reach this stage at the same time.
I'm really not sure why you are supposed to lift them anyway -- presumably in order to mimic the baking hot dry summers of their native habitat, and prevent the bulbs from getting waterlogged? Everything in the trough was worryingly dry, as has been the case with all the plants I've repotted, despite twice-daily watering, which is obviously barely enough to keep them from wilting -- it shows how long it has been since we had any meaningful rain.
However the bulbs were clearly happy, as they have put out a lot of plump little offshoots, as shown in the photo; even the one at the end which barely grew and had a puny flower has survived in good health, somewhat to my surprise. The instructions on the packet say "Do not keep the small offshoots as they will not flower", but in some cases it's hard to tell what is the 'offshoot' and what is the main bulb; they appear to have cloved-up like garlic! (Apparently they will bloom, as one would expect from a plant that naturally propagates itself, but not for several years until they reach maturity. However I really don't want any more tulips....)
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Date: 2026-05-10 10:52 pm (UTC)https://zonedgarden.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/When-to-Plant-Tulip-Bulbs.webp