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How to Care for tulips after bloom

When tulips are done blooming you should dead head them and try to keep the leaves green as long as possible. Water the tulips twices a week when it is dry and the temperatures are above 75 degrees. After the leaves die back you can either choose to dig the bulbs up and divide them or keep them in the ground during the summer. We advise to dig them up at least once every three years.

 Why dig them up? 

In Holland tulip growers dig up their bulbs every year. After digging they divide the bulbs (A bulb multiplies into 1 big bulb and several baby bulbs). The big bulb they sell and the small baby bulbs they plant again next fall (to grow big bulbs again...) this is how they multiply their tulips. In your own garden you can do the same. Multiplying will even go faster because you will not sell any of your bulbs... Multiplying sounds nice, but the problem is that tulips don't grow well if it gets crowded which is why it is important to dig them up and separate them.

There are varieties called "perennial" tulips. These tulips don't multiply as fast and come back year after year without digging them up.

How to care for Tulips in Virginia? See below-PBS Virginia Home Grown with the Tulip Man

Most people do not know this but Virginia has a pretty good climate to perennialize tulips. Tulips are from Central Asia where it is cold in the winter and hot in the summer. It is very important for the tulips to be warm and dry in the summer (in Holland that's not ideal, even in the summer it is rainy and cool). Tulips labeled as "Perennial Tulips" can come back for many years. Other tulips can be too weak to flower after the first year or produce too many baby bulbs and become overcrowded.

 To guarantee top quality flowers we advise purchasing new tulips on a yearly basis from your organic bulb supplier!

Watch this video to learn more about "How to store bulbs" and why some tulips perennialize easier.