Potted Tulips
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There’s a sea of potted tulips in the stores now and I suspect more than a few have drifted into assorted kitchens in the guise of Valentine’s Day presents. What follows is a quick and dirty guide to the growing and rescue of these bulbs.
Enjoy and How To Extend the Bloom
The first step of course is to enjoy the blooms for as long as possible. You can extend the bloom time by keeping the plant as cool as possible. Hot air (whether from furnaces of protestations of undying love) will shorten the length of time the flowers will last. Keeping the soil slightly damp will also extend the bloom time; use the finger-test, if the soil is damp, leave it alone. If the soil is dry, soak it. Drying the plant out and keeping it warm are two quick ways you can eliminate the plant, I’ll have to leave it to you about how you get rid of the unwanted suitor. So cool and slightly damp will do the trick if you only want a few blooms. If you want to get this plant to bloom again, you have to take it a few steps further.
Conditions To Get it to Rebloom
To get a potted tulip (or any outdoor bulb for that matter) to bloom again, you have to treat it as if it were outside. The first rule is to grow the foliage. This means that when the flowers are fading and falling apart, you snip off the stem of the flower as close to the base as you can. This gets rid of that silly flower and it’s desire to set seed. You’re left with some rather ugly leaves but these leaves are critical for next year. They’re making all the sugars that get pumped down to the bulb so the bulb can produce another flower for next year.
One Bloom Session Per Year
And no, sorry you only get one flower show per bulb per year. You want full sun or as much light as you can provide in a nice cool area of the house. You won’t grow if you don’t eat and it’s the same thing with a bulb. Not only does it need sunshine, it requires plant food. So get some houseplant food, read the directions and follow them with this lovely bulb. Those directions are going to tell you to feed it once a week in the growing season and this is it. Full sunlight and plant food will help the bulb grow strong enough to produce another flower.
Leaf Management
You don’t want to tie up the leaves, cut them off or do anything to them other than allow them to grow as big and strong as they can. That’s it. Easy gardening. All you’ll do between now and late May is feed and water and try to keep those leaves growing. If you don’t give them enough sunshine, they’ll get long and ugly. Relax, the odds are that you simply can’t give them enough light and this is to be expected. So by the end of May, you’ve done well if the leaves are alive, dark green but long and ugly.
After Frost - Out it Goes
At the end of May or when you believe all danger of frost is over, take those ugly leaves and potted bulbs out to the garden. Plant them (soil and all) into the garden where you’d like them to live. Plant them so the level of the soil is at the same level of the potted soil. The bulbs themselves will adjust their depth over the next few years to where they want to be. When the leaves finally go yellow and die, you can cut them off. You’ve done it! Next spring, those same Valentine’s Day potted tulips will rebloom in your garden as a reminder of this year’s gift. It’s up to you if you really want to remember or not.
In the House Again? Or not?
Now the fun thing is to decide you want to grow these same potted tulips in the house again. Maybe you don’t have an outdoor garden, maybe you just want to keep potted tulips around to remind you of Mr Hunk. (or Ms Gorgeous - I’m an equal opportunity writer). You plant them outdoors, the leaves go yellow. Then you dig them up. If you’ve grown them properly between now and then, the bulb has enough energy for a new flower. You’re a winner! Leave them sit cool and dry for the summer. Don’t bake them, don’t put them in the freezer, just leave them alone (in a place where you’ll remember where they are) in a well-ventilated spot to contemplate their future.
First Steps in Mid-October
This future is going to start again in mid-October when you replant them and turn them into your own potted tulip farm.
The simplest way is to take a 15 cm (6-inch) pot, put 3 cm (1-inch) of soil in the bottom and arrange the bulbs so they’re just touching each other (not jammed in but no large spaces between them) and then cover with soil to the top of the pot. I suggest labelling the pot but that’s up to you. Soak the pot with water and then put outside until freezeup.
We need to give them 14-16 weeks of cold weather. So you can put them in a garage or shed but you don’t want to let them get really cold - as in deep freeze. A guideline is that you can use the refrigerator (and you can) for this but not the freezer. The important thing is to ensure the 14-16 weeks of cold.
Timing Those Blooms
Approximately 21-25 days before you want to see potted tulip flowers next spring, you bring them into the warmth and start the process all over again. I note this include the hugging and kissing that started the entire thing but that’s as far as this family column will go. The growing instructions are here, you’re on your own for the rest of it.
Very good, detailed advice (thanks, Doug), however why would anyone go through all that trouble when it is so easy to get new each year? I guess it would be fun to try once just to know you can. I’ve forced tulips before, but I start with new bulbs in the fall, plant them in a pot and then bury the pot in the middle of one of my compost bins. I can’t get them out until the compost thaws (zone 5b) but it works. I’ve found Hyacinths to be super easy to force, but their strong scent indoors is too much. Too much of even a good smell becomes stinky.
Jan
Doug,
I’d love to hear from anyone who has gone through this process and gotten BLOOMING tulips the second and third year. It is my understanding that the majority of these flowers, especially ones for the “holidays”, are bred to be one-year-wonders. Every public garden that I know of digs up the bulbs after their tulip display and throws them out, replanting new bulbs the following fall.
My experience has been that even when most tulips (Darwin and species bulbs being the exception) are grown outdoors, fewer come back the following year, and by the fourth year out none bloom. The pinks and fancy colors go after one year and the reds last the longest.
Have you really gone through the process you describe and, (sorry to be cranky here, but it’s snowing AGAIN) do you have photos to prove it?
Yeah, some photos with the progress will be a good additional point. Agree with CL here.
@C.L. Fornari -
And yes, I’ve had great luck in getting tulips to grow from year to year. The “trick” is in the watering. Or really lack of it. Remember that tulips are a summer-drought plant and if you water the plants above them – you’re pretty much killing off your tulips. So in my general garden areas, I have the same problem as other gardeners – the darn things fade away. In my previous garden where I had dryland specialty plants, the tulips were fine. (really porous rotten soil and absolutely no supplemental watering).
Hey CL – I understand how the snow can get to you for sure. LOL! Having said that, yes, like most of what I’ve written I’ve done it. (30 years of trying to kill plants will do that to you)
Have I done this in pots? More than once but now I don’t bother (been there, done that and tulips are cheap) Did I take pics? They are in the slide files somewhere and now that I’ve gone digital, I don’t even know where the boxes are (moved twice since going digital).
Are hybrid tulips as vigorous as the species? Nope. The species propagate and multiply like mad. You have to physically dig, divide etc with the hybrids (and regularly).
So yes, you can keep regular hybrid tulips from year to year and I wrote the article for those folks who are berserkers and really want to try. Or who can’t stand to throw a plant away. Do I do it anymore? No – I have other things to learn about and try to kill and tulips are inexpensive.
@prairiepetunia -
on tulips. They often don’t take “no” for an answer. Me, I pitch the darn things now – been there, grown that – move on.
There are some folks who can’t stand to toss out a plant – and who really, really want blooms (You should see the notes from Southern gardeners)
@C.L. Fornari -
Oh yeah, on public gardens – if I were running one, I’d do the same darn thing. I want a display year round and if I water the display plants to keep them growing, the tulips are done for. Far better to dig/replant and ensure a show. The City of Ottawa does over a million bulbs every year this way as part of their tulip festival – and a significant part of the heritage of the city. Short version is that the Royal Dutch family took refuge in Ottawa during WW2 – the Canadian Gov’t made the hospital room where the current Queen was born, an official part of Dutch soil so the Princess could be born on Dutch soil. In gratitude the Dutch have been sending bulbs ever since. Huge Dutch immigrant population in Canada and they brought their flower sense with them.
Doug,
LOVE the story about the City of Ottawa! From now on when I see tulips I’ll think of that story along with my memory of a friend from my college days. Barbara said she HATED tulips – “They look like a kid’s drawing of a flower,” she’d rant, “a stick with a big blob of color at the top. Those vandals that cut the tops of tulips off in the park? I know why they do it.”
And you thought Roses were the flower of passion…
I love tulips myself, but have no trouble tossing them out, be they cut flowers or potted bulbs. A plea to any of your readers who can’t throw a plant away and try to keep them in pots from year to year: send me pictures!
@C.L. Fornari -
Having been in the nursery business, it’s easy to throw plants away after the first million or so.
HI: I am learning something from this post. Over the years have just planted Tulips and let them grow, some came back for a few years and some did not. I never thought about how or why, just went with flow. After reading this article my mind is starting to remember what I did know about tulips and what I have learned about them. Guess I will have to dig into my Library and do a study of them. I do have a bed of tulips that this year will be the forth or maybe the fifth year if they come back. I will look through our photo library to see if we have and pictures of them from year to year.
Thanks for the awaking,
John
John at JWLWs last blog post..It’s Cold Here
John,
I know that outdoors tulips come back, more or less depending on variety and as Doug says, watering, and some better than others. I’m interested in photos of this keep them in a pot thing….
Yet one more reason to compost. Throwing out a plant isn’t hard when it means gaining a compost ingredient.
Jan
Very interesting, Doug. You’re the first person I’ve heard of to manage to get potted tulips to rebloom indoors. I always tell people to toss them afterward. Now, thanks to you, I know how they can be successful — should they really, really want to. Always fun to learn something new.
Judy Lowe/Diggin’ Its last blog post..Twitterers in the garden
C.L.: don’t have any photos of Tulips in pots, sorry.
John at JWLWs last blog post..It’s Cold Here
Doug – my impression was that leaving potted bulbs outdoors for the winter will kill them since the pots freeze completely, unlike ground soil. My mom just proved me wrong by putting her bulbs in a pot on the porch for the winter, and now they’re growing beautifully. She lives in Seattle.
So, the real question is – how deep is deep freeze? I’m in New York city, and couldn’t resist buying potted tulips that are available on every corner these days. Since I’m one of those people who hates throwing out plants (since there’s such a scarcity around me) I would love to leave the pot of bulbs on our building’s terrace for next year and get them to bloom again. Or will I have to resort to the fridge?
Thanks!
@Ruchi -
Bulbs produce antifreeze in the fall rather than water in their tissues so they can “freeze” somewhat. The absolute low temp is determined by the health of the bulb, the size, the conditions in the fall etc. Absolute freezing solid in a dry state or right out of the greenhouse in the spring isn’t a great idea. So that’s the long way around saying it depends. I know some folks who leave a lot of overwintering plants between the outer and inner doors on the back porch. They get enough heat through the door to stop from dying. Inside a porch is usually fine for the same reason (and Seattle is nowhere near as cold as New York). But again, it depends on how the plants go into the winter, whether they need any moisture during the winter etc. etc. The best advice I can give you is to simply do it. Then you’ll know and you’re not wasting too much money.
Great insights! You’re right that some people really hate to lose their tulips, but as you mentioned, they can be complicated to keep as perennials for the long term. Growing tulips the first year is easy, but after that, they need special care, for the most part. I prefer to treat them as annuals, except for the species types. This year, I planted some Apple Blossom tulips, as well as some Ice Cream Tulips. I don’t know how I will manage to wait until spring to enjoy them!