So I know its been a while since my last post, but I have sadly been mourning the loss of my compost heap. We are having issues with voles and/or moles so we had to eliminate anything that could be attracting them to our yard.
Anyway…on to the topic of this post: Tulips.
Are your tulips dying? Drooping? Slimy? All together worthless at this point? Fret not friends, there is an easy solution!
You can easily transform your tulip beds into container garden masterpieces.
I have been doing some research and found out that there are lots of ways to tackle this issue. I will first tell you the things that I found out, then I’m going to tell you what we ended up doing.
Some people leave the whole thing alone and let nature take its course, strategically planting summer flowers or annuals around the dying tulips as to camouflage what’s going on and distract onlookers from the mess. Still others cut back the brown foliage, and wrap what little green is left around each bulb, tie with some type of twine, and replant (I think, it wasn’t made clear if they were extracted/wrapped/replanted or if they were just binding the leaves themselves leaving the bulbs in the ground) so the bulbs can feed through the year. Those using this method also plan ahead and pre-plant their summer bloomers around these bundles or create a temporary container garden in the beds.
This is what we did in our yard…..
And this…..
This is what we stored our bulbs in….
In both beds, we cut down the dead and dying parts and dug up the bulbs completely.
You may respond later that you can’t believe I am asking you to do so much work, but believe me, you don’t want to leave the decomposing leaves in the bed, or the bulbs in the ground until next spring.
Bulbs left in ground produce baby bulbs. These babies take a couple seasons to mature so they won’t actually grow back right away. The “mother” bulbs are so depleted after this process they end up not being that great when they come back next Spring. So I urge you to cut down the yucky ugly stuff right now or very soon, depending on the status of your tulips. Get those bulbs out of the ground and store them in a plastic bag or bucket, in a cool dry place, and replant them in the Fall. This is what we are trying out this season and I did enough reading to be convinced it is the best way to go.
Happy gardening!
Until next time 🙂
