Tulips - Tulips in the Garden
Tulips love to be outdoors when the climate is right. They originated in Central to Western Asia, near present-day Turkey and Kazakhstan. Cold winters and hot, dry summers preceded by a few weeks of good spring rain will make them grow healthy and fast. A garden blessed with those conditions will require very little else from the gardener as far as growing tulips is concerned.
When planting, be sure to dig down about six to eight inches, then lay down a little fertilizer at the base of the hole. It can also be dusted with insecticide at this time to keep larvae and other pests at bay.
Though it's generally only important when potting, a gardener that wants to influence the direction of roots and flowers should plant the bulb in a desired orientation. The flat side of the bulb is the portion that tends to produce the flower. The more rounded side ejects the roots.
If you're planting very close to rocks or a border with a fence that has underground stakes at the bulb's depth, it can be helpful to heed this. Though few gardeners would think to do otherwise, be sure to plant the bulb with the pointed end up. It's possible for tulips to grow to the surface anyway, but pointing down makes it much harder.
Plant the bulbs in the fall, when evening temperatures have dropped below 50F/10C. Naturally, this isn't the usual time of year for gardeners to be planting new plants. But tulip bulbs are never fully dormant. They spend the winter creating starches and sugars internally that will be used by the developing plant the following spring. They'll also produce a root system until the weather turns truly cold.
That activity is one of the reasons the onion-like layers on a tulip bulb are so important. They help the bulb retain moisture that is essential for that development process. Take care not to damage these outer layers when handling the bulb.
An alternative method is to place the bulbs in soil in a pot, then refrigerate the assembly for a few weeks or months. This can work and may be necessary for some climates where the winters never get cold. But it's a second-best solution if the ultimate plan is to grow tulips in the garden.
It's more commonly used for a procedure called 'forcing', in order to produce tulip flowers in the winter. That method does work quite well, but the goal in that case is different.
Apart from some modest watering, about once per week in the spring when temperatures begin to rise around mid-March (assuming nature doesn't supply it), very little care is required. A bit of weeding, some modest disease and pest control, and the tulip does all the rest of the work. What gardener could ask for more?
Most tulips have a relatively short flowering period, though, so expect them to wilt after two or three weeks. But, oh, those two weeks! What beauty! After it passes, just deadhead the remains by pinching off the head and let the foliage die back naturally.
