When to plant tulips? For tulips, autumn planting is important, or maybe it can be done in spring? How to plant tulips? What should be the depth of planting bulbs? The answers to these questions determine how our flower garden will look in the spring. Tulips are bulbous plants. It is best to plant them in the fall. Why is autumn tulip planting preferable? The answer is simple: because the bulbs at the same time winter in their natural conditions, which in the spring will provide optimal germination and beautiful flowering.
When to plant tulips in the fall, in which month? In the Kuban, the best dates are mid-October-early November, and for central Russia, a month earlier. In fact, we plant tulips in the winter. Before the onset of cold weather, they must take root, but not go to growth.
How to plant tulips in autumn in the open ground
They are one of the first to bloom when other flowers have not yet sprouted or have not even been planted. They look very blooming when planted in heaps, groups. The larger the group, the better the impression it makes. How to arrange them will tell you the taste, as well as the place allocated for landing.
Soil preparation
I will not tell you any secret if I say that before planting tulips, you need to prepare the ground. This is best done two weeks before landing. What soil do these flowers like? Loose, fertile. The place where they will grow must be sunny.
If the soil is dry, first you need to moisten it well, and only then dig it.
If your plot has dense soil, then add sand to the hole or trench before planting - flowers like loose soil. I also add wood ash - it is also a good fertilizer, as well as additional protection against various diseases. Alkaline soil is more suitable for tulips, and ash just deoxidizes the soil well.
Regardless of how you arrange the bulbs - in rows or piles, I advise you to sprinkle them with a small amount of humus or compost, and to fill up with soil on top.
And do not forget, they need the sun, and the breeze, so as not to disturb. If the site is at least partially closed from the sun, then the stems will stretch, thin out, twist, and the bulbs will not be able to accumulate a sufficient supply of food for themselves.
The site should be flat, with a good subsoil. The roots of tulips go to a depth of a little more than half a meter, so if you have groundwater close, then the bulbs will get wet and die. In this case, you will have to plant tulips on a hill.
Bulb processing before planting
When we dug up tulips in summer after flowering, we dried them well, sorted them. Large bulbs separately - we will plant them in the most prominent place - they will bloom, delight us. Small or medium-sized flowers will not bloom in the spring, therefore, as experts advise, it is better to plant them in an inconspicuous, but sunny place.
That's about how I sort the bulbs, after drying into three parts - large, medium, small.
Next summer we will get large ones with medium onions from the medium onions. And from small ones, we get medium ones. That is, for small children it may take at least two seasons until they bloom.
I plant tulips not in rows, but in round clearings. It seems to me that this way they will look more natural.
Unfortunately, tulips are susceptible to fungal diseases. Therefore, before planting them, it is necessary to withstand the bulbs for at least half an hour in a solution of a fungicide, for example, Maxim, Fitosporin or a weak solution of manganese.
Planting tulips in the fall in the ground or baskets for bulbs
A convenient fit for planting is plastic baskets with a trellised bottom. They are convenient in that they help to form floral arrangements on the flowerbed, facilitate the process of digging bulbs after flowering. You can usually buy special baskets with a height of 6-7 cm. The average height of a large bulb is 4-5 cm. So, the hole should have a depth of 12-15 cm.
This is not the first year that I have been using special plastic baskets for bulbs for planting in the fall. But I always have a lot of tulips, so I use plastic boxes for vegetables, plus not baskets, but not high, but with the lowest sides.
With this method of planting, much less time is required to dig up tulips from the earth in the summer. Almost no uncoated or accidentally left. Even damaged by a shovel or pitchfork does not happen, since I actually dig out a box or basket, and only then I shake out the contents to the ground.
I really like this way of planting tulips. Even if I sometimes do not have time to dig onions in time in the summer, I leave them not dug for another year, I am sure that they will not go deep, they will not go anywhere.
If you plant bulbs without baskets, that is, a good helper is a cone with a measuring scale, the purpose of which is to dig holes of a given depth.
Well, if you do not have baskets or a cone, it does not matter. You can do without them. In the area where I planned to drop them, I dig out round or rectangular pits.
To what depth should tulips be planted?
When planting tulips, you need to know the basic rule. Planting depth should be equal to the height of the bulb times three.
This depth guarantees good flowering, the appearance of a large bulb, strong, not very small children. A smaller plant will give you a small flower and, accordingly, not a large bulb.
The distance between the tulip bulbs when planting
According to the agrotechnical rules, there should be a distance of 10-15 cm between the bulbs. But blooming tulips look close aesthetically more beautifully, located close to each other, like a living bouquet. If you dig bulbs every year, and experts advise you to do just that, do not be afraid to plant them with a distance of 5-6 cm from each other.
How to water tulips
Now a little about watering. Do I need to water freshly planted bulbs? It all depends on soil moisture. If the soil is wet, then irrigation is optional. But in the case of planting in dry ground, you need to shed a hole or a groove well.
Regularly, abundantly water tulips should be watered during the period of active growth, during budding, flowering, especially in dry years. Moisture should penetrate to the depth of the roots (0.5 m), and not just wet the ground. After flowering, watering stops.
Is it possible to plant tulip bulbs in spring
You already know that autumn is considered the best time for planting bulbs. And what if, for some reason, we did not have time to do this? Store the onions until spring in the refrigerator in the vegetable compartment.
It happened to me once ... True, a friend shook her head and said that her bulbs rotted in the refrigerator (she kept them in a plastic bag). Given her bad experience, I folded the bulbs in a thick paper bag. I periodically looked in there. But there were no rotten bulbs. There were a few soft ones, I threw them away. Maybe later they would rot, I don’t know. I did not wait. Landed at the end of February. I did not notice any particular problems with flowering, with flowering dates. Bloomed simultaneously with the neighbors.
So in February-March, planted bulbs also take root well. Checked. When I call the dates for planting tulips - February-March, I mean, of course, the Kuban. To the north these months the soil is usually still covered with snow and there is no question of landing.
Florists from any region should know that the daytime air temperature when planting tulips in spring should reach + 8-10 ° C.
Fertilizing tulips during planting, during the growing season, after flowering
Ordinary tulips are almost not whimsical. It is enough to add ash, humus or compost to the hole during planting.
But for varietal tulips need a more thorough examination. They need to be fed with mineral fertilizers 2-3 times per season.
The first dressing can be carried out even in the snow - scatter dry fertilizer - about 2 tablespoons per 1 sq. Km. m
The second top dressing - after the emergence of seedlings. Kemira Universal mineral fertilizer is best suited. Prepare the solution according to the instructions, pour the seedlings of tulips at the rate of 2-3 buckets of solution per 1 sq. m
The third time I advise you to feed after flowering, but no later than 2 weeks. Dissolve 1 matchbox of any potassium phosphate fertilizer in a bucket of water, such as potassium monophosphate. With a solution, water the tulips that have discarded color.
How to grow large tulip bulbs
When we sorted the bulbs, we knew that only large ones would bloom next year. The size of the flower depends on the size of the bulbs, however, varietal characters still play a role here.
I will share one secret how to get large bulbs and, as a result, large flowers. Sometimes it is important when you are going to propagate some wonderful variety, or you sell bulbs. Professionals use a term such as decapitation - the removal of flower heads. I also advise you to use this technique.
How to decapitate? Let the flower blossom, admire its beauty. Make sure that varietal symptoms are present, there is no curvature of the stem, that is, the flower is healthy. 3-4 days after opening the bud, remove the flower. In this case, the mass of the bulb by the time of excavation will increase by 30-40%.