Expert: Long Island Gardener - 4/22/2007

Question
I live just north of Philadelphia, PA  (zip 19090) and every year my children give me pots of blooming flowers, daffodills, tulips, etc.  I plant them in my garden in the fall, and if the squirrels don't eat the bulbs, they sprout leaves.  Sometimes I am lucky enough to get flowers, and sometimes not.  If they bloom, I will pick some of the flowers, and more often than not, they do not bloom the following year.
I have heard that some of the bulbs sold (flowering and to plant) are annuals.  Is this true? How can I tell?  Does cutting a flower cause the bulbs not to bloom again?  If so, I guess I have to stop cutting them, but that was the whole point of planting them in the first place.  I love to have fresh flowers inside and out.
Thank you

Answer
Tulips are notorious non-bloomers, and the ones we purchase in pots are no different.  You would not believe how many people write to me asking the procedure for putting these in the ground to bloom again the next spring.  Most of the time, it's going to be a disappointment.

What's the occasion for these flowering presents?  Figure that if your children give you blooming bulbs around Mother's Day, they are sitting indoors in the kitchen, or in the dining room, somewhere far removed from the full sun exposure they NEED to produce flowers for next year... if ever.  Tulips are not bred for reliable return; they meet demand for color.  Stem length (short for the kinds of pots you receive, long for florist blooms, in between for gardeners).  Unusual and unique hues.  No one cares if you take them home and see them only once.  (There is a new push for that, however -- how reliable they are I can't say.)

Every day spent inside is a 10-plus block of photosynthetic activity lost for your potted bulbs.  They simply cannot make that time up.  No wonder they rarely return.  That they return at all is sort of amazing.  You must have some green thumb to pull that off.  Pat yourself on the back.

The most relaible returning Tuips are still the Early Single Tulips, which are in fact species Tulips and which have built in resistance to splitting and offshoots.  Daffodils (which are also called Narcissus) are more reliable -- if you give them full sun and don't overwater them.  Crocus, Chionodoxa, Scilla, Hyacinths -- these are all first rate bloomers that come back every spring unless you interfere.

Cutting spring bulbs prevents the bulb from going to seed.  You're doing your bulbs a favor when you remove the flowers.

One year, my little brother, around 5 years old, did not have a Mother's Day gift for our mother.  So he walked over to one of the nicer neighborhoods and yanked up a few blooming stalks of Iris out of somebody's garden.  Then he walked all the way home and found a pot in the garden, plunked it in and threw some dirt on top.  Voila!  A Mother's Day Gift.

Years later, I returned home to see a long driveway filled with blooming violet blue Irises up and down.  It was beautiful.  My mother told me how my little brother had given her 'those' and they just multiplied.  To her last days, she never did know how little Rod managed to figure out how to get such a pretty Mother's Day Gift.

That said, perhaps your children might consider Iris next year.  Lilacs are nice too.  I prefer the white fragrant Beauty of Moscow.

Thanks for writing.  Keep me posted.