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| Day 1 -- I cheated |
In all honesty, Southern California isn't the greatest place for tulips because the bulbs require a good solid winter chill in order to bloom, and that is one thing we do not have -- winter chills. (I am not sad). So this being my first attempt with tulips, I wanted to see if they would actually grow, what kind of care they needed, etc. As you saw last week, they did! Will I be trying tulips again? Most definitely yes.
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| Little buds and blooms, how cute! |
So, from the beginning, here's what to do:
1. Faking a winter chill:
If you buy bulbs -- and there is good reason to because there are so many more beautiful varieties out there -- you will need to trick your tulip into thinking it is somewhere where tulips belong, like Holland (or Washington State -- who knew? Though of note, the family in charge of these tulip company are also Dutch).
How? Your lettuce drawer in your refrigerator will do just the trick. Refrigerate in a brown bag for 6 weeks prior to planting. Avoid putting the bulbs near ripening fruit that emits ethylene (like apples) and if your crisper freezes things like ours does, keep it somewhere else in the fridge -- you do not want your bulbs to freeze.
2. Planting:
If you live on the coast like I do, you will want to plant your bulbs around the holidays. Ideally, you can find a spot that is shady during December/January and then sunny in February when your tulips are likely to start blooming.
How? Well, if you have pots, you can move them, or if your bulbs are in the ground, then you can cover them. Why? The shade will help tulips will put down better roots and full sun will prevent the flowers from leaning toward the sun when they've bloomed.
As for soil, well-draining soil is best. If you've grown tulips in the same spot/pot previously, either replace the soil or plant your bulbs elsewhere. Plant them a couple times deeper than they are wide and water daily. Fertilizing with nitrogen based plant food before bloom is recommended, particularly if you plan on keeping your bulbs.
3. After-care:
If you want to try to keep your bulbs for the following year, wait until the leaves wither and then dig them up (in the fall) and keep them in a cool dry place (like your garage) until you're ready to fake them out in the fridge again. The problem is, this apparently doesn't always work that well -- the following blooms end up being shorter and smaller than the previous years... if they even bloom. There are some exceptions, but the SoCal gardening sources I am using suggest buying new bulbs every year.
If you do have great success with replanting bulbs, wonderful! At some point, as with most bulbs, they will grow big enough that you should divide them, which you should do in late summer.
4. Trouble-shooting:
Potential pests include squirrels (they try to dig bulbs up -- this happened to me this year! Fortunately, it gave up or failed), slugs/snails, and aphids. You can cover your just-planted bulbs with chicken wire and there are sprays for the other slimeys and suckers. I had a short-lived aphid issue on one of my tulips that disappeared as soon as I doused some Neem oil on.
Besides that, all there is left to do is enjoy!
As of now, I think I will try to replant my bulbs, just to see what happens. Right now, there's still some serious foliage going on though, and they're in a planter I would like to use for other purposes, so I will either have to plant around them or just keep on looking at the tulip leaves for awhile.
Lastly, for all my LA folk, unless you were a VERY deep sleeper, you experienced the earthquake this morning... 4.7 in the Santa Monica mountains! As a Texas-bred girl, I realized today that I know what to do in tornados, but not in earthquakes. So I looked up some earthquake safety tips and am sharing them here for your reading pleasure!
Sources for today's post include The Sunset Western Garden Book and Pat Welsh's Southern California Organic Gardening.
