Has anyone had any success doing this? Most of what I've read advises treating tulips as annuals but I'm loathe to throw them away if there's a decent chance they might bloom next year 🤔
I had a load of tulips that were dried and stored in net bags in the garage. They were given away on Freecycle and the lady sent a photo the following Spring. Although not quite as plentiful, they still put on a good show. I haven't had a photo this year though ! They should bloom again but not as vigorously in my experience of the ones l kept.
I tried lifting and storing - and got the colours muddled up! But I tend to grow them these days in pots, and have successfully saved the pots for a couple of years, although the blooms are smaller and decline with age. Once they have finished flowering, cut off the seed head, give the foliage a good foliar feed. Either lift and store, or let them die down naturally, ready to appear again next spring. Some cultivars are better than others - Queen of the Night, in my experience, is very temperamental with repeat flowering.
That's funny as I find QoN pretty reliable at coming back. I grow mine in pots and leave them a year, if they flower again, they get another chance, if not, they go in the compost bin.
I have just dug up my Tulipa Queen of the Night (and a bunch of Muscari bulbs). Just wondering what I do next? Let them dry out and store them in the garage until Autumn?
Muscari won't appreciate being dried out, so just pot those up for now, and keep them outside somewhere [labelled] , or replant them in a border. I do as @Hostafan1 with most tulips, and generally regard them as annuals, as our conditions don't suit them very well. Very few of them are consistently reliable in the UK, unless you have really suitable conditions for them.
The species tulips are different.
It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word....
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
I leave them in the pots, if they come back next year, well and good , if not, they go in to the compost bins. ( but you need to have spare pots to be able to do this I suppose )
If I need the pot, I lift mine out and dump them into old plastic pots. When they’ve dried out I might get round to shaking off the old compost (or not 🙄). They then just get put somewhere dry out of the way until replanting in the Autumn.
As said some come back better than others. I had Red Parade and Van Eijk in pots last year and they reflowered again just as well this year. QoN we have in the garden, they were here when we moved in and have flowered every year since (this is at least their 6th year) but interestingly I have never had success getting a second year from them in pots.
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”—Marcus Tullius Cicero East facing, top of a hill clay-loam, cultivated for centuries (7 years by me). Birmingham
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Although not quite as plentiful, they still put on a good show. I haven't had a photo this year though !
They should bloom again but not as vigorously in my experience of the ones l kept.
Once they have finished flowering, cut off the seed head, give the foliage a good foliar feed. Either lift and store, or let them die down naturally, ready to appear again next spring.
Some cultivars are better than others - Queen of the Night, in my experience, is very temperamental with repeat flowering.
I grow mine in pots and leave them a year, if they flower again, they get another chance, if not, they go in the compost bin.
I do as @Hostafan1 with most tulips, and generally regard them as annuals, as our conditions don't suit them very well. Very few of them are consistently reliable in the UK, unless you have really suitable conditions for them.
The species tulips are different.
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
As said some come back better than others. I had Red Parade and Van Eijk in pots last year and they reflowered again just as well this year. QoN we have in the garden, they were here when we moved in and have flowered every year since (this is at least their 6th year) but interestingly I have never had success getting a second year from them in pots.
East facing, top of a hill clay-loam, cultivated for centuries (7 years by me). Birmingham