Expert: Long Island Gardener - 5/9/2008

Question
The city where I live pays a nursery to plant the plant boxes along the Main street in my Town. They workers where coming through and ripping the tulips out and throwing them away so a co worker and I went out to take the tulip bulbs (they have already bloomed here for the year and some were already rotting.) for ourselves. My question is this. What do we do now? Can we go ahead and replant them or should we keep them somewhere cool like I saw in a previous post?

Answer
Give it your best shot, Sheri.  Plant them in a full sun location, water well, talk to them, be nice.  Let foliage wither away and remove the spent blooms as quickly as possible.

IF you are VERY lucky, they will bloom next year.

Tulips, unfortunately, are not very reliable.  I know exactly how it is to watch landscapers drive up in the middle of the night to do this kind of work, and yank out thousands of beautiful Spring bulbs.  I know.  I know.

But if those bulbs are Tulips (and they are sometimes NOT Tulips, in which case you have a great chance of seeing at least another year or more of perennial posies every Spring for your rescue efforts), if they ARE Tulips, you can pretty much kiss them goodbye.  C'est la vie, alas.  Give it a shot.  See what happens.  Keep me posted.  Thanks for your question,

L.I.G.