After flowering you need to dig tulip bulbs up every year
Why to dig up tulip bulbs?
First, in order to provide the most comfortable conditions for flower buds in young bulbs. Remaining in the soil depth, the bulb is exposed to excessive moisture, inadequate temperature and even infections. This prevents the formation of full substitutional bulbs – hence you will face with their grinding and future flowers, weakening and even death of plants.
Secondly, in order to select the largest, developed and strong for further planting. Because not all large bulbs form the same large ones.
Third, being planted in one crowded place for a few years, bulbs will quickly become small and form a set of kids, who are starting to delve into the hard soil, turning into a disaster, because to dig them up is more and more difficult with every year.
When to dig up tulip bulbs?
A real signal to digging tulips bulbs is the yellowing of leaves. The most appropriate term – leaves yellowing at about two thirds of their length. By this time the young bulbs are matured and became strong enough, and kids still firmly hold onto them.
It is important to dig bulbs up promptly. With too early digging bulbs do not have time to ripen, the coating scales are not yet formed, as a result – badly stored bulbs and increased likelihood of mechanical damage, as well as, various bulbs diseases. In addition, early farming negatively affects multiplication factor and decorative qualities of tulips next year. However, early digging has its advantages: the scale of bulbs is tight and it does not crack during storage. The possibility of getting various pests and diseases there is also excluded. The result is a high quality planting material.
Floriculture specialists recommend you to make a trial digging. If the roots are fully formed, and the surface of the coating scales has brown spots or at least one spot (for example, three of the five bulbs), then you can start digging up all of them. If it thinks the bulbs are not quite ripe, keep in mind that during storage, they are perfectly ripened and their scales become light brown.
Delayed digging is also undesirable, because it leads to the loss of a great amount of planting material – tulips’ leaves shrink and disappear, as a result, it is difficult to find the bulb. Furthermore, overripe bulbs nests scatter in the ground, and small bulbs are not dug, some of them will be damaged and become a further hotbed for different diseases.