Expert: Long Island Gardener - 4/8/2007

Question
I;ve lived in my home for 11 years, the tulips bloomed beautifully for the first few years. Now they don't bloom at all. Do tulips quit blooming after a few years? Should I dig them up and replace them with new this fall? I'm not sure what zone I am but my zip code is 45005. Thanks. Rita

Answer
Yes, Rita, given that Tulips as a Genus are scientifically Perennial plants, you would expect them to grow and grow and grow.  Forever.

We know they need N-P-K.  So some of us are devoted enough to out Tulips to fertilize them with sometimes expensive bags of bulb-booster.

For a while, I thought I had the trick.  I figured, next year's flower is being formed after the Tulip blooms.  After all, this is why we are always advised to allow foliage to die back.  And so, through the hot days on Long Island in June and even into July, I would be spraying Phlox for mildew, Roses for blackspot, deploying Ladybugs for aphids, watering Petunias, the garden defaced for months while I patiently waited for the last brown leaf to wither away on the spring Tulips.  I have HUNDREDS of these.  Believe me, it was not a pretty sight.

And so I dosed those Tulips with what I thought would be the magic wand of fertilizer, Phosphorous.  It would max out next year's Tulip blooms right from the beginning.  Those strong Tulip roots would thank me.  My blooms would return.  All that money was not wasted.  Superphosphate and Bone Meal were the answer, in my theory.

Yet, year after year, this still did not work out for me.

Most of those bulbs -- I would even say ALL of those bulbs -- never looked the same after this year.  No matter what I did.

Some had foliage, but no flowers.

Most had smaller flowers.

Several did exhibit close-to-last-year's impact.

But it was never the same year after year.  And there is, it turns out, a reason for that.

The reason: Hybrid Tulips are bred for beauty.  They just do not have what it takes to bloom over and over again.  It's not in the genes.

Online retailer Dutch Gardens (http://www.dutchgardens.com/on/demandware.store/Sites-DutchGardens-Site/default/...) is one of many places you can buy a new kind of Tulip that is labelled 'perennial'.  This is how Dutch Gardens explains the situation:

'In most regions of the U.S., there's enough rainfall to keep soils moist throughout the summer ... Tulips bulbs that spend the summer in moist soil, tend to split.'  A company staffer studied this problem while in graduate school.  One finding was that larger, 14 cm bulbs had a higher chance of blooming more than once.  They are marketing this small strain in different colors as 'Perennial Tulips'.

So all these years, you and me, and lots of other people, were confused.  We were told Tulips return every spring.  Most of them don't.

And it has nothing to do with your green thumb.  It's just the genetics of these things.  Something triggers them to multiply; once that happens, they don't have the fuel to rebloom. You can raise the odds in your favor by digging them up at the end of spring, and keeping them bone dry.  

Which is a real pain the neck considering what you have to go through to get them in the ground in the autumn.  This digging is very hard labor.

Me, I don't have that kind of energy.

This holds true by the way for Daffodils, too.  Daffodil Obsessors dig thousands of these in late spring and re-plant them, first dipping in highly toxic fungicides and inspecting for the Narcissus Bulb Fly.  They tend by the way to be a highly educated clique with PhD's in narrow botanics-related fields of study doing special research in their day job.  It's a way of life.  And they are really good at it.

Species Tulips -- sold as Single Early Tulips or by their Latin names -- seem to be able to perennialize.  My mother planted black Tulips once, along the house foundation, and they lasted almost 20 years.  Seemed to be the way things were supposed to go back then.

To ease the financial burden of this hobby, I order bulbs by the score from Van Engelen Tulips in Connecticut (www.vanengelen.com) or Brent and Beckys Bulbs (www.brentandbeckysbulbs.com).  The Euro being stronger, Dutch Tulips aren't as cheap as they used to be.  Still, to me, there's nothing as delightful as those tall, long stemmed Tulips growing outside the window in the spring.

Thanks for writing.