After a long, cold winter, I want to add some bright, rich colors to my life. How to care for tulips after flowering so that they delight you with their abundance of colors every year? An integrated and competent approach is needed. This is practically the first garden flower, so you need to take care of it in the fall. Caring for tulips after flowering is necessary in order to obtain good planting material next year.
There is one incredible legend about the yellow tulip. Once upon a time, long ago, the gods were in the middle yellow tulip hid happiness. They promised that it would go to the one who managed to reveal yellow flower. Many tried to do this in order to take happiness for themselves, but it didn’t work out for them. One day I ran up to a flower little boy. He took a yellow tulip bud in his hands and, rejoicing at the flower, laughed loudly and loudly. And then a miracle happened: the flower opened, obeying the magic of children's sincere laughter.
For many people, the tulip is a symbol of spring and holiday. I want these incredible flowers to delight you with their beauty every spring. Like other plants, the tulip requires good and proper care.
Many gardeners believe that this unpretentious flower, which does not require special attention. Therefore, they are cared for only during the flowering period. This is a misconception. How to care for tulips after flowering can be divided into several processes.
Need for love and care
After the tulips have fulfilled their decorative function, the entire peduncle should be removed. Then they continue to be fed and watered for another 2 weeks. Fertilizers based on potassium and phosphorus are ideal as a feed.
The plant can be pruned only after all the leaves on the stem have turned yellow. It is not recommended to cut tulips immediately after flowering, as the bulbs will stop developing. When digging up bulbs, you must adhere to the following rules:
- 1 It is better to dig in sunny weather. This will give them the opportunity to dry faster.
- 2 If it so happens that you dug up tulip bulbs in wet weather, you definitely need to make sure they dry.
- 3 When digging, you need to drive the shovel into the ground as deep as possible.
- 4 After the bulbs are removed, it is necessary to carefully review all the material and remove diseased specimens.
- 5 Early varieties of tulips are dug up first.
Some gardeners believe that removing the plant from the ground once every 2 years will be enough. In order for a gardener to enjoy a blooming carpet of tulips in the spring, they need to be dug up annually. So, you can provide young bulbs good conditions for the formation of flower buds.
If you leave it in the ground, it will be susceptible to various infections, which will have a bad effect on the formation of a full-fledged bulb, and in the worst case, the planting material may die. We must not forget that high-quality and healthy planting material is a guarantee that next spring magnificent tulips will bloom again in the garden or flowerbed.
How to properly collect and prepare planting material? This issue needs attention special attention. The most common mistake of all novice gardeners is that they leave tulips in the ground for the entire summer period. This is done only with some varieties of red flowers. All the rest must be dug up annually, otherwise the flowers will become smaller each time.
In the process of separating the children, the mother's bulb sinks lower into the ground, thereby pushing the young specimens upward. An unearthed tulip will ensure that the children will bloom next year, and the mother bulb will go lower into the soil.
There are no exact dates when you can dig up tulips. This can be determined as follows: if the dried stem of a tulip easily twists around your finger, then the tulips can be dug up. The above-ground part of the plant should not be allowed to dry out completely. If you miss this moment, digging up an onion with children will be problematic. Having matured, the children move away from the mother's bulb, and when digging they can be damaged with a shovel or not noticed and left in the soil.
Growing tulips and caring for them is quite a troublesome task. After the planting material has been removed, you need to provide it proper storage. Dug up and washed running water Before drying, the bulbs are disinfected with a solution of karbofos for preventive purposes.
The bulbs need to be dried. To do this they are spread out thin layer in a well-ventilated room. The air temperature must be maintained in the range of 25-30ºС.
If the process of digging up the bulbs took place in hot summer weather, you can skip the washing. At this time, lumps of dry soil and roots are removed from the dried tulips. It is also recommended to treat the bulbs with a solution of potassium permanganate before storing them.
Before leaving them for the winter, the plants need to be sorted and placed in boxes made of boards or cardboard boxes. Spread no more than 2 layers. If there is a need to preserve planting material until spring, then for these purposes it is better to select bulbs 3-4 cm in size. This way you can be sure that next year the tulips will produce large flowers.
The bulbs selected for storage are laid out in containers. It would be nice if the bottom was made of mesh material. This will ensure better air access to the bulbs stored for storage. Sometimes gardeners scatter them in small batches into fabric bags or nylon tights, which are then hung.
To ensure greater preservation of the bulbs, they can be sprinkled with dry sawdust. If the batch is small, wrap each onion in newspaper.
If one rots, the newspaper prevents the others from becoming infected. It makes sense to periodically review the stored material and discard rotting bulbs. You also need to be sure that the room allocated for storage is not accessible to rodents. For mice, a tulip bulb is a delicacy; they are capable of destroying most of the planting material.
Autumn period
If a gardener does not plan to store them, but prefers to plant them in the fall, he will be interested in the following recommendations for planting tulips in open ground. Flowerbeds for tulips should be planted in areas where there are no large depressions. These flowers do not like wind and prefer to grow in well-lit places. Tulips are planted not only in flower beds, they look great as a garden flower.
Choose a dry place for planting. Stagnation of water at the roots can cause plant disease and also lead to rotting of the bulbs. To provide tulips with more favorable conditions for growth, from broken bricks or sand make drainage.
For normal growth, they need to be planted at a distance of approximately 15 cm from each other. To form beautiful flower garden They use the following technique: large bulbs are planted in the center of the hole, and small ones on the sides. Before planting, it is necessary to carefully review all the material. Bulbs with various flaws, cracks or cuts are removed. Only 100% high-quality material is planted.
Tulips (Tulipa) are incredibly beautiful during flowering. The problem is the loss of decorative value of most species after flowering. This spoils the overall appearance of the flower garden, makes it difficult to care for other flowers and interferes with planting new ones. It won’t be long before the bulb can be put into storage. Until then she has enough to do long time be in the soil. The aerial part (leaves with a shortened peduncle) cannot be removed. For many years now I have been using a couple of techniques to solve the problem of clearing a flower garden of faded tulips without changing the development cycle of this perennial bulbous plant.
The tulips are blooming so beautifully!
Condition of tulips after flowering
It is easier to care for tulips in separate beds and flower beds. However, ordinary flower lovers rarely have such a luxury. Their tulips are often included in garden compositions, decorate flower beds with annuals and perennials, or grow “anywhere.” After flowering, they suffer from inevitable mechanical damage associated with caring for neighboring plants and their planting. Waterlogging of the soil, diligent fertilizing with organic matter, etc. do not improve the condition of tulips.
These beautiful tulips are good in the flower garden only at the moment of flowering
If you cut off the entire above-ground part immediately after flowering, the bulb will not be able to form and reach a mature state. Its growing season usually ends by the end of June - beginning of July, which is easily determined by the weakening of the turgor of the peduncle, withered color and wilting of the leaves. By this time, the covering scales of the replacement bulb acquire a golden brown color. It is impossible to be late with digging up bulbs, as the risk of nest collapse and loss of covering scales increases. “Naked” bulbs are stored worse. I installed it for myself deadline Digging of bulbs - the middle of the first ten days of July.
Where to hide a faded tulip?
Often, various annual and perennial plants grow in a flower garden along with tulips, making it possible to decorate faded bulbous plants. But this doesn't always work. Imagine how unsightly a border of faded tulips looks, which just recently looked amazing.
There are tulips with decorative leaves. I plant them separately, as they are good even after flowering has ended. For example, Kaufman tulip(favorite varieties "Johann Strauss", "Giuseppe Verdi" And "Ice Tick" ) may have bluish leaves with stripes and specks. Wide leaves Tulip Foster with a waxy coating on the leaves of some varieties they are decorated with reddish stripes and specks. Greig's tulips have varieties with wide bluish leaves with cherry-red streaks and spots (“ Dreambot", "Mary Ann" "). U " Oriental Beauty" And " United Nations » leaves with noticeable brown streaks. " New Design » ( Triumph tulips) valued for its flowers and the silvery edges of its dark green leaves.
These tulips are good even after flowering has ended.
The list of varieties with striped and painted leaves is huge. Such tulips, especially low-growing ones, look ideal among stones. They can be planted in rock gardens.
Low-growing tulips with variegated leaves always attract attention. Their decorative properties do not suffer even from proximity to such a classic weed as dandelion.
I have to "cheat" this culture in order to avoid a number of inconveniences associated with caring for faded tulips. Those tulips that have ordinary leaves, I remove from the flower garden immediately after flowering. To do this, I take a suitable container with holes at the base. This can be a plastic or metal bucket, large flower pot, basin, balcony box or something else. The main thing is that there are drainage holes or cracks, holes, etc. for drainage of rain or irrigation water.
I pour sand and light soil at the bottom. After this, I carefully dig up the tulips with their bulbs so that the lump of earth with roots does not disintegrate. I place them in a container and cover them with soil. Then I transfer the container with the plants to a secluded area. semi-shaded place garden If necessary, I lightly moisten the soil at first.
It’s good that I didn’t throw away the old bucket with a rusty bottom, in which drainage holes were later made
This technique allows plants to live through a certain development cycle (until the bulbs are prepared for storage) in an environment that is unnatural for them. These tulips bloom beautifully next year.
Autumn planting of bulbs in special plastic baskets is also convenient, which simplifies the task of clearing the area of faded tulips. Tulips in baskets bloom on our site in the most different places. Under lilac bushes, around apple trees, near manholes (water supply and sewer) and in many other places. All I have to do is dig up such a basket with a garden fork so that it does not crack or break. It’s easier if this product is not very wide and deep enough. Lately I have been using baskets more often for aquatic plants (garden pools and ponds).
These tulips grow in a bulb basket
A basket removed from the ground is a real mini-flower garden. It is heavy, so I take it to a semi-shaded corner of the area where the hazels grow, in a wheelbarrow, rather than carrying it in my hands. I do not remove the stuck soil from the bottom. I sprinkle the sides of the baskets with soil. Sometimes I dig it in at a short distance from the bush. The tulips will be there until the beginning of July. I also like this technique because there is no need to clear the ground under three huge hazel bushes from weeds. Even dandelions and dandelions, which cannot germinate under baskets of tulips, disappear. And a lot of them accumulate.
The basket with these faded tulips could have been safely dug up much earlier
P.S.
So simple techniques make life easier for the average amateur gardener. They will please both the “lazy” summer resident and the landscape designer. To professionals and amateurs seriously involved in growing tulips, this may seem barbaric.
But the described options work great for me and many of my friends. Simplified agricultural technology after the end of flowering allows you to admire the delightful flowers of tulips, which do not grow in special ridges and separate flower beds, but flaunt in various places on the site.
The more tulips, the better. They decorate the area so much!
© Alla Anashina, website
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It is known that tulips need care not only during the growing season. Giving them the right to lush flowering again is quite possible with proper care and following a few simple rules.
Depending on the variety, tulips begin to bloom from March to June. Flowering lasts from one week to three, then the plants begin to lose their appearance and gradually fade. However, this is not a reason to stop caring for them.
Do I need to trim tulips after flowering?
In order to maintain the size of the buds, it is necessary to trim the tulips after each flowering. This is due to the fact that during the growing season, the plant forms a new young bulb (sometimes several bulbs) underground, inside which a shoot and next year’s flower are initially born. For better ripening of the future bulb and preservation of everything it needs useful substances you need to free the peduncle from the old bud.
Tulip refers to perennial plants: Its development from seed to flowering state takes three to seven years. And if you properly care for this plant, it will form lush buds every year.
When and how to prune tulips after flowering?
There are several subtleties to the process of pruning tulips after they have bloomed. You need to wait until the plant petals become dry and easily separate from the stem. Next, you need to first mark the location of the tulip bulbs in the soil, so that when digging them up it will be easier to find them.
The pruning tool must be disinfected with alcohol-containing wipes or liquid (you can also use potassium permanganate and ferrous sulfate for this) and wipe dry with a clean rag.
If you decide to take still blooming tulips from the flowerbed for a bouquet, then in this case the stems of the plants should not be cut, but carefully broken, leaving at least two bottom sheets: the flower will need them to restore its strength.
Do I need to water and fertilize tulips in the spring after they bloom?
After flowering ends, tulips need to continue to be watered for another two weeks.
Feed tulips in spring for lush flowering possible with fertilizers containing nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. But if the blooming tulips have not been fed, then after pruning them the soil must be fertilized with phosphorus and potassium, mixed in equal proportions at the rate of 30-35 g of mixture per sq.m.
It will not be superfluous mineral fertilizers, containing manganese, zinc and boron. You should not fertilize tulips with manure: it can cause the bulbs to rot. Chlorine is also contraindicated for these flowers.
When are tulip bulbs dug up?
As a rule, the time to remove tulip bulbs from the soil falls at the end of June - beginning of July, when these plants have already bloomed, but their underground shoots have not yet had time to “get lost.” In the northern regions, this time shifts to mid-July - early August.
You need to dig up tulip bulbs at the moment when approximately two-thirds of their leaves turn yellow. With earlier harvesting, the plant will not have time to form high-quality planting material, and later harvesting will lead to drying out and loss of the bulb.
After removing the bulbs from the soil, they must be checked for the presence of mold, rot, fusarium and other diseases.
The affected bulbs are thrown away, healthy ones are dried for two to three days under a canopy, protecting them from direct contact with sun rays. Well-dried tulip bulbs are divided into groups, depending on their diameter, cleaned of excess roots and scales and kept in a pink solution of potassium permanganate for at least half an hour. Planting material ready for storage.
In order to preserve the tulip variety, gardeners advise digging up their bulbs annually. This is especially true for new plant species - terry, green-flowered, fringed, parrot. But simple early and simple late tulips, as well as tulips of Kaufman, Foster, Greig, Triumph and Darwin hybrids do not require “updating” for 3–6 years.
How to store tulip bulbs?
Tulip bulbs should be stored in a cool, dry place with good ventilation. With proper maintenance, they will feel great until the autumn planting, which also has its own characteristics.
It is best to plant tulip bulbs in open ground from mid-September to mid-October.
Achieving beautiful and lush flowering of tulips is not at all difficult: give them attention and they will reciprocate your love.
Our conversation will be about when to dig up tulips after flowering, whether it needs to be done every year. I know that there is an opinion that you can plant tulips and not touch them for several years. But that's not true.
Why do you need to dig up tulips after flowering?
In the conditions of our flower beds, tulip bulbs (even during one season) tend to become buried and, if we do not pick them out of the ground, then every year they will go deeper and deeper. It will be difficult for the sprouts to make their way to the top from the depths - as a result, the bulbs will simply rot in the ground, not even leaving children. The spring flowerbed will be empty...
There is another reason that tulips need to be dug up. After flowering, the bulbs must form a new flower arrow during the dormant period. The main requirement is that at this time they must be at a temperature not lower than 25ºС. But the deeper you go, the lower the soil temperature. The further north tulips grow, the more difficult it is to provide them with the required temperature at depth.
Thus, there are at least two reasons why it is necessary to select tulips from the soil after flowering:
- avoid natural deepening of the bulbs;
- Ensure the storage temperature is not lower than 25ºС for the formation of a full-fledged flower arrow.
If you want to admire large tulip flowers, it is recommended to remove the bulbs from the ground every year.
This is one of the main agricultural techniques for growing tulips.
By leaving the bulbs untouched in the ground, we obviously contribute to the crushing of flowers, since several children are formed next to one bulb, which will also germinate in the spring. We will get a bunch of tulip sprouts that will interfere with each other’s growth and development; they will also not have enough nutrition. As a result, every year we will get smaller and smaller flowers in the flowerbed. In addition, remaining in the ground, tulip bulbs accumulate diseases, and they will bloom later than usual next year.
For better formation of the flower arrow after flowering, immediately cut off all flower stalks, do not allow the seed box to ripen.
I am often asked whether it is necessary to remove tulips from the ground that were planted in special bulb baskets? Indeed, in this case, the bottom of the plastic mold will not allow the bulbs to go deeper.
That's right, deepening will not happen, but without picking out the bulbs from the ground, which over time become overgrown with children, you risk losing abundant flowering- the flowers will become smaller, their number will decrease rather than increase.
By planting tulips and other bulbs in plastic bulb baskets, you make the digging job much easier and faster. All the bulbs - large, medium, small - are in one place, it is impossible to miss them or leave them in the ground.
Digging time
No one will tell you the exact date when it’s time to dig up tulips after flowering. I usually answer this question - at the beginning of summer. But this is true for Kuban, although not specifically. Here you can dig up tulip bulbs already in the first half of June, in middle lane Russia - a month later.
The main reference point is the condition and color of tulip leaves after flowering. That is, yellowed, withered leaves let us know that the bulb has formed. As soon as you notice that the leaves have begun to turn yellow and faded, it’s time to remove the tulip bulbs from the soil.
There is another reference point - the color of the outer scales of the bulbs. Ripe tulip bulbs should have brown outer scales.
The excavation must be done very carefully. I use a pitchfork for this purpose, since a shovel can damage the bulbs. Then I go through the dug up area with a three-pronged hand cultivator, since it is undesirable to leave small bulbs in the ground - this will simply clog the future flowerbed and make it not very beautiful.
It should be noted that if you have tulips of early, middle and late flowering periods, then it is better to dig them up in different times. By postponing this work until later, until all the varieties have bloomed, you risk not finding the place where the early flowers grew. It will also be easier to sort the bulbs by variety. Digging up a flower bed with early tulips too late increases the risk of damaging the bulbs.
How to properly store tulip bulbs before planting
The dug up bulbs are dried in the open air, always in the shade. The timing of pre-drying depends on what soil you dug them from. If the soil was dry, then 2-5 days are enough, and if it was wet, then the drying time increases - sometimes up to 2 weeks.
Then you need tulips, or rather, bulbs:
- clear from earth;
- remove the covering scale, the one that easily separates itself;
- tear off old dried roots;
- sort the bulbs by size.
Sorting into small, medium, and large is mandatory, since the depth of planting in the fall and the planting location will depend on the size of the bulb.
Small and medium-sized bulbs most likely will not bloom next year - they can be planted for growing in a more modest, but sunny place, out of sight. And for planting large bulbs we will choose the most honorable place.
Sorted, peeled onions should be placed in a ventilated, dry, warm room- attic, shed, country house. They will be stored there until autumn planting at a temperature of 25-28ºС.
