Expert: Long Island Gardener - 3/31/2007

Question
 I am originaly from the east coast. I live in San Diego now, and am REALLY unfamilir with what blooms when. I juat planted around 75 tulip bulbs, and someone told me I will have to dig them up after they flower and fade back, store them in the fridge.
Is this the case? Would any of them return next year if I didn't?
thank you

Answer
Holy moly, what is it with people in San Diego and Tulips?

As I mentioned to someone a few weeks ago, I was in San Diego in February 1982 - trapped there on assignment while the rest of the country was buried under a major national snowstorm.  No way out.  I thought I'd died and gone to Heaven.

Airports and trains and buses East of Texas were completely shut down.  So I picked up the phone and sadly told my editor I would not be able to make it back to New York just yet.

Which is why I have so much trouble believing that anyone living there in Paradise would get the urge to grow plants that are just not made to grow in that kind of heavenly weather.

Tulips evolved in mountainous regions with snow on the ground.  Temperatures there never get higher than 60 degrees F.  I have never so much as grown a radish in Zone 10, but my best guess is that your biggest problem growing Tulips is going to be that beautiful San Diego weather.

A single 80 degrees F afternoon and your Tulip bulbs will faint from heat exhaustion.  Especially if the bud is ready to bloom.  High winds will do the same thing by dessicating the bud.  Poof! Your Tulip bloom is history.

Consider one more problem, though.  Although bulb catalogs do not make it clear, most Tulips won't be coming back more than 2 or 3 seasons.  Many won't ever be back at all next year.

There are a few reasons for that.

There's the squirrels factor.  Squirrels go wild for Tulips.

There's the Profit factor.  Over in Holland, they just don't make Tulips like they used to.  Growers are businesspeople.  The profits are made in big, colorful, tall- or
short-stemmed Tulips for the cut flower trade.  Fragrance is of no consequence.  No one cares if your Tulips will grow again, whether you refrigerator them or not.  Longevity is largely irrelevant -- in fact, by breeding short-lived
Tulips, they are encouraging you to replace them.  In my case, that's a few hundred dollars a year.

If you store these in a refrigerator, and protect
them for the summer, and then replant in the fall, AND you have a variety that is bred for "perennialization" as they are calling it, you might get an extra season or two out of them.

Remember, though, that Tulips form Bulblets that multiply the Tulip at the expense of the flower.  One to a customer.  
Almost always.  With a few exceptions, namely the ones that are genuine Species Tulips but just happen to have a name and look gorgeous.

Fertilizing will not make a difference.  Temperature will not make a difference.

Who knows?  With snowstorms in Malibu last winter, maybe you just happen to be in the right place at the right time.

Now that you are in Zone 10, you have a whole new world of flowering plants.  Tropicals that never need to be hauled into a greenhouse -- like my Orange Trees do, ever late autumn.  Jasmines!  Orchids!  Plants I can only dream of are sitting on the store shelves, with your name on them, waiting for you to bring them home.

You have NO idea, Susan.

I hope your Tulips bloom a bright, wonderful flush this year.  And I would like very much to know what results you get.  The flush will be at best fleeting -- ever seen a flash flush?  If you're lucky, you will.  And you can even try my instructions out for a season; dig up some, dig up all, and refrigerate and see what happens.

Meantime, however, get on the internet and see what you've been missing while resident here on the East Coast, in Tulip Country.

They call it Paradise for a reason.