How to Grow Tulip Flowers like a Jeweled Crown

A yard with a lot of Tulip Flowers blooming in it looks like a jeweled crown. There are so many wonderful Tulip Flowers that it is tempting to tuck them in everywhere. But if you do this keep in mind that the broad, strap-like leaves will be conspicuous long after the jewels are gone. Getting uglier and uglier as they start turning brown.

This brightly colored jewel announces spring’s arrival, along with the cheery daffodil. The Netherlands is the world’s main producer of commercial tulip plants, producing as many as 3 billion bulbs annually, and the majority for export purposes. Moreover, most commercial Tulip Flowers cultivars are complex hybrids, and often sterile.

You would have to either live that or treat tulips as annuals by getting rid of the leaves after blooming and ending the plant’s growth. When Tulip Flowers are grown in more compact plantings, their leaves can be deliberately hidden by bushy annuals, perennials, or ground covers.

Though tulips are a perennial from a botanical perspective, several centuries of hybridizing mean that the bulb’s ability to come back year after year has weakened. As a result, a lot of gardeners treat them as annuals, planting new bulbs every autumn.

Also, buying Tulips bulbs can be confusing unless you know the different types. Here are a few major Tulip Flowers groups.

• Early Flowering Tulips, start blooming shortly after crocuses. They include single tulips that grow up to 16 inches and doubles that grow up to afoot. The gold-orange “General de Wet” is a fine example of it.

• Midseason Tulips include the single “Mendel” and “Triumph” tulips which normally grow 16 to 26 inches tall and the big “Darwin Hybrids”. These grow to 30 inches, stand up well in bad weather, and are long-lived as tulips go. They come in many colors; “Apeldoorn” is a bright orange-red.

• Late-flowering Tulips, this group includes “Darwin Tulips” not to be confused with the “Darwin Hybrids”. These are shaped like an egg that is slightly squared off at the bottom and grows 22 to 30 inches tall. The “Lily-flowered” tulips, such as the pink “Mariette”. These are shaped like a vase that comes in at the neck and then flares out again in points and grows 18 to 26 inches tall.

• Moreover, “Cottage” Tulips have a compact egg shape. “Parrots” tulips which grow 20 to 22 inches tall, are very showy, with twisted ruffled or fringed petals (plant the spectacular deep purple “Black parrot” with some white parrots for a striking combination.

The “Double Late” is also called “Peony-flowered” tulips, have big many-petaled flowers and grow 2 feet tall or less. “Rembrandt” tulips are broken, that is stripped, or spotted; the colors are a combination of red, yellow, or white. Also, “Species” tulips are actually hybrids of several species, and are, for the most part, short-stemmed.

They include the early blooming tulipa kaufmanniana (waterily Tulip) which has open spreading, pointed petals, is often bicolored, and grows up to 8 inches tall; T. fosterana is also early, which has very large flowers and grows 12 to 18 inches tall. T. greigii, which is late-blooming, is less than a foot tall and has yellow and red petals. Species tulips especially T. kaufmanniana hybrids tend to the longer-lived than the taller types.

How to Grow Tulip Flowers?

Tulips like the sun but will grow and bloom in part shade, in fact, they prefer partial shade in warm climates. But be sure to keep the bulbs cool if you are not planting them right away; in hot climates give them a month of refrigeration before planting time.

So, you have to plant in mid-fall in well-drained, sandy loam. Also never try to deliberately water a bulb bed. Because wet soil leads to fungus and disease and can rot bulbs. Also add shredded pine bark, sand, or anything to foster swift drainage.

If you are planting them in a bed, dig plenty of organic matter into it. Scratch some high phosphorus fertilizer into the soil and plant them at least 6 inches deep; plant in wire cages if rodents are a problem. Moreover, if it rains weekly, you don’t need to give water. However, if there is a dry spell and it does not rain, you must water the bulbs weekly until the ground freezes. 

Also Read: 

• How to Grow, Care for Perennial Iris Flowers

• Amorphophallus Titanum

• 9 Unique Rose Varieties

Source: Almanac! Wikipedia