Expert: Long Island Gardener - 12/29/2006

Question
What do I do now that the tulips have bloomed to reuse the bulbs, or is that not worth it?  I have about a dozen red and white tulips that bloomed for Christmas and I would love to either do it again next year inside or go ahead and move them outside.  How do I treat the bulds now in order to do that. Thanks, Kim

Answer
You can give this your best shot, Kim, and it's relatively uncomplicated and effortless.  But Tulips are not usually "meant to be" more than a single bloom or two.  Don't be disappointed if your best efforts yield a great big zero.

Place the spent potted Tulips in the sunniest window in the house, indoors.  The foliage would start to shrivel and finally brown and practically beg to be cut.  Go ahead and cut.  But not unless almost all the green is gone from the leaves.  The chlorophyll will be working on building next season's bloom as long as it gets sun.

Once the bulbs are de-leaved and de-flowered, put them in the coolest part of your basement, out of the pots.

In the late, late summer, pot them up again and place in the refrigerator to simulate the cool season.

Keep there for 2 months, watering occasionally and making sure the drainage is effective.  Roots form at this stage; you want them to get as much energy as they can from the plant, but you don't want them to rot from sitting in puddles of water.

Now, when you take them out of the fridge to bloom, make sure you don't blast them with air that is too warm.  Once bloomed - if you are that lucky - start the whole procedure over again.

Blooms where successful tend to be smaller, just slightly, each year.  Fertilize only with high Phosphorous (middle number in the N-P-K formula on the side of the fertilizer) plant food; this is very important, as in lab tests, bulbs fed Nitrogen are inclined to rot quickly.

It is a lot of work.  But these things do not come cheap.  Think of all the $$ you can save.  How many more of them you can have if you master this technique.

IF you master this technique...

But then, it is still going to be unpredictable.  Let me know how it turns out.