What to do with tulips after flowering. Luxurious flower bed: how to properly cut tulips after flowering. How to store tulip bulbs after flowering

Tulips (Tulipa) are incredibly beautiful during flowering. The problem lies in the loss of decorativeness of most species after flowering. This spoils the general appearance of the flower garden, makes it difficult to care for other flowers and interferes with the planting of new ones. The bulb will not be ready for storage soon. Before that, she will have to be in the soil for a long time. The aerial part (leaves with a shortened peduncle) cannot be removed. For many years I have been using a couple of techniques that allow me to solve the problem of freeing a flower garden from faded tulips without changing the development cycle of this perennial bulbous plant.

Tulips bloom so beautifully!

Condition of tulips after flowering

It is easier to care for tulips in separate beds and flower beds. However, ordinary flower lovers can rarely afford this luxury. Their tulips are often included in garden compositions, decorate flower beds with annuals and perennials, or grow "anywhere". After flowering, they suffer from inevitable mechanical damage associated with caring for neighboring plants and planting them. Does not improve the condition of tulips and waterlogging of the soil, diligent feeding with organic matter, etc.

These beautiful tulips are good in a flower garden only at the time of flowering.

If you cut off the entire aerial part immediately after flowering, then the bulb will not be able to form and reach a mature state. Its vegetation is usually injected towards the end of June - beginning of July, which is easy to determine by the weakening of the turgor of the peduncle, the faded color and wilting of the leaves. By this time, the covering scales of the replacement bulb have acquired a golden brown color. It is impossible to be late with the digging of the bulbs, as the risk of decay of nests and loss of covering scales increases. "Naked" bulbs are stored worse. I have set for myself the deadline for digging the bulbs - the middle of the first decade of July.

Where to hide a faded tulip?

Often in the flower garden, together with tulips, various annual and perennial plants grow, allowing you to decorate faded bulbs. But that doesn't always work. Imagine how unsightly a border of faded tulips looks, which until recently looked amazing.

There are tulips with decorative leaves. I plant them separately, as they are good even after flowering. For example, tulip kaufman(favorite varieties Johann Strauss, Giuseppe Verdi and "Ice Tick" ) may have bluish leaves with stripes and specks. Broad leaves tulip foster with a waxy coating on the leaves of some varieties, they are decorated with reddish stripes and specks. Greig's tulips have varieties with wide bluish leaves with cherry-red strokes and specks (" Dreamboat "," Mary Ann "). At " Oriental Beauty" and " United Nations »Leaves with noticeable brown streaks. " New Design » ( Triumph tulips) is prized for its flowers and silvery edging of dark green leaves.

These tulips are good even after flowering.

The list of varieties with striped and painted leaves is huge. Such tulips, especially undersized ones, look perfect among stones. They can be planted in rock gardens.

Low-growing tulips with variegated leaves always attract attention. Their decorativeness does not even suffer from the neighborhood with such a classic weed as dandelion.

I have to "cheat" this culture in order to avoid a whole series of inconveniences associated with caring for faded tulips. Those tulips that have ordinary leaves, I remove from the flower garden immediately after flowering. To do this, I take a suitable container with holes at the base. This can be a plastic or metal bucket, a large flower pot, a basin, a balcony box, or something else. The main thing is that there are drainage holes or cracks, holes, etc. to drain rainwater or irrigation water.

I pour sand and light soil at the bottom. After that, I carefully dig out the tulips with the bulbs so that the lump of earth with the roots does not disintegrate. I put them in a container and sprinkle them with earth. Then I move the container with plants to a secluded semi-shady place in the garden. If necessary, I slightly moisten the soil for the first time.

It's good that I didn't throw away the old bucket with a rusted bottom, in which the drainage holes were later made

This technique allows you to give plants the opportunity to live a certain development cycle (until the bulbs are prepared for storage) in an environment that is unnatural for them. These tulips bloom beautifully next year.

Convenient and autumn planting of bulbs in special plastic baskets, which simplifies the task of freeing the site from faded tulips. Tulips in baskets bloom on our site in various places. Under lilac bushes, around apple trees, near manholes (plumbing and sewer) and in many other places. All I have to do is to dig such a basket with a garden pitchfork so that it does not crack or break. It is easier if this product is not very wide and deep enough. Recently, I have been using baskets for aquatic plants (garden pools and ponds) more often.

These tulips grow in a bulb basket

The basket taken out of the ground is a real mini-flower garden. It is heavy, so I take it to a semi-shady corner of the area where hazel trees grow, on a wheelbarrow, and do not carry it in my hands. I do not remove the stuck soil from the bottom. Sprinkle the baskets on the sides with soil. Sometimes I dig it in at a short distance from the bush. Tulips will stay there until early July. I also like this technique because there is no need to free the land under three huge hazel bushes from weeds. Even dandelions and runny disappears, which cannot germinate under baskets of tulips. And there are a lot of them.

A basket with these faded tulips could be safely dug up much earlier.

P.S.

Such simple techniques make the life of an ordinary amateur grower easier. They will delight both the "lazy" summer resident and the landscape designer. To professionals and amateurs seriously involved in tulip cultivation, this may seem barbaric.

But for me and many of my friends, the described options work fine. The simplified agricultural technique after the end of flowering allows you to admire the delightful flowers of tulips, which do not grow on special ridges and separate flower beds, but flaunt in various places on the site.

The more tulips the better. They decorate the site so much!

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Bright tulips are among the first flowers to bloom in spring. They captivate with their beauty, and in Holland they are even considered a symbol and pride of the country. These delicate plants need careful and regular grooming. Florists pay special attention to feeding, weeding, watering and replanting tulips. But not everyone knows that at a certain stage after flowering they need pruning. It is very important to know what to do with the tulips after they have faded.

In early spring - in April - you can see the first leaves of tulips. Plants begin to bloom a little later - in the last spring month. However, there are early varieties of tulips, which are full of already at the end of March, and later ones only in the second half of June.

You can admire tulips forever, but the period of their flowering is very short. The flowers begin to fade and the question arises of what needs to be done with them next.

After the tulips have faded, they must be cut and replanted, or the bulbs must be dug up for winter storage. Pruning tulips is definitely needed, so every gardener should know how this process goes right.

How to prune tulips after flowering

After the tulip bloom is over, certain chemical reactions still occur in the leaves and peduncle. It is these parts of the flower that saturate the plant with useful substances in order for new bulbs to develop well. Therefore, completely wilted leaves and inflorescences should be cut off after flowering.

If you do this earlier, then the chances are good that the bulb will disappear. Some wilted flowers shed wilted leaves and peduncles themselves.

After the end of flowering, the tulip heads should be cut off. When the flower withers, the plant gives seeds, and this is not very good for the bulb, because it becomes weak. The process goes like this:

using scissors, you need to separate the tulip head from the stem;
the stem remains in place until the leaves turn yellow. This will happen in about a month and a half;
it is necessary to cut the foliage at ground level and remove everything above the ground;
the location of the flower should be noted in some way so as not to lose the bulb.

You should not carry out such manipulations with varietal tulips, but plant them with seeds.

It is recommended to cut and dig up the flower bulbs 3-4 weeks after the tulip has faded. Please note that tulips cannot bloom all the same in one day. This is a long-term and time-consuming process, so you need to be patient.

Tulip bulbs are stored under certain conditions

There are one-year-old tulips that will not sprout in the second year. Parts of these tulips, including the bulb, are discarded after flowering. Many gardeners like these flowers because they are inexpensive, they are easy to grow, and you don't have to think about what to do with them.

After the bulbs have been dug up, they must be stored until spring. The rules for storing bulbs are as follows:

remove debris, soil from the surface of the bulb;
mark the date of collection of the bulb and the tulip variety;
put the bulbs in a wooden container (box);
store in a dark, dry place, warm (up to +17 degrees) and without drafts.

In spring, the bulbs are planted in the ground after being carefully checked for rot and damage.

Our conversation will be about when to dig out tulips after flowering, whether it needs to be done every year. I know that there is an opinion that you can plant tulips and not touch them for several years. But this is not the case.

Why dig up tulips after flowering

In the conditions of our flower beds, tulip bulbs (even during one season) tend to deepen and, if we do not choose them from the ground, then every year they will go deeper and deeper. It will be difficult for the sprouts to make their way up from the depths - as a result, the bulbs will simply rot in the ground, not even leaving the children. The spring flower bed will be empty ...

There is another reason why tulips need to be dug up. After flowering, the bulbs should form a new flower arrow during the dormant period. The main requirement is that at this time they must be at a temperature not lower than 25 ° C. But the deeper, the lower the soil temperature. The farther north tulips grow, the more difficult it is to provide them with the required temperature at depth.

Thus, there are at least two reasons for picking tulips from soil after flowering:

avoid natural burial of the bulbs;
ensure the storage temperature is at least 25 ° C to form a full-fledged flower arrow.

If you want to admire the large flowers of tulips, it is recommended to remove the bulbs from the ground every year.
This is one of the main methods of tulip cultivation.

Leaving the bulbs untouched in the ground, we knowingly contribute to the grinding of flowers, since several children form next to one bulb, which will also sprout in the spring. We will get a bunch of tulip sprouts that will interfere with each other's growth and development, they will also lack food. As a result, every year we will receive flowers in the flowerbed smaller and smaller. In addition, remaining in the ground, tulip bulbs accumulate diseases, and they will bloom the next year later than usual.

For the best formation of the flower arrow after flowering, immediately cut off all the peduncles, do not let the seed box ripen.

I am often asked whether it is necessary to extract tulips from the ground, which were planted in special baskets for bulbs? Indeed, in this case, the bottom of the plastic mold will not allow the bulbs to go deeper.

That's right, deepening will not occur, but without picking out the bulbs from the ground, which over time become overgrown with children, you risk losing abundant flowering - the flowers will become smaller, their number will decrease, and not grow.

Planting tulips and other bulbs in plastic bulb baskets makes digging much easier and faster. All bulbs - large, medium, small - are in one place, it is impossible to miss them, leave them in the ground.

Digging time

No one will tell you the exact date when the time comes to dig up tulips after flowering. I usually answer this question - at the beginning of summer. But this is true for the Kuban, although not specifically. Here you can dig up tulip bulbs in the first half of June, in central Russia - a month later.

The main reference point is the condition and color of tulip leaves after flowering. That is, yellowed, wilted leaves let us know that the bulb has formed. As soon as you notice that the leaves have begun to turn yellow, have faded, it is time to remove the tulip bulbs from the soil.

There is one more landmark - the color of the cover scales of the bulbs. On ripe tulip bulbs, the top scales should be brown.

The digging must be done very carefully. I use a pitchfork for this purpose, as a shovel can damage the bulbs. Then I also go through the dug-up area with a trident manual cultivator, since it is undesirable to leave children in the ground - small bulbs - this will simply clog up the future flower bed, make it not very beautiful.

It should be noted that if you have tulips of early, middle and late flowering periods, then it is better to dig them up at different times. Postponing this work until later, until all varieties have faded, you risk not finding the place where the early flowers grew. Sorting the bulbs by type will also be easier. Digging up a flower bed with early tulips too late increases the risk of damaging the bulbs.

How to properly store tulip bulbs before planting

The dug out bulbs are dried in the open air, always in the shade. Pre-drying times depend on the soil you dug them from. If the ground was dry, then 2-5 days are enough, and if it is wet, then the drying time increases - sometimes up to 2 weeks.

Then tulips, or rather, bulbs, you need:

cleanse the earth;
remove the covering scales, the one that easily separates itself;
tear off old dried up roots;
sort the bulbs by size.

Sorting into small, medium, large is required, since the depth of planting in autumn and the place of planting will depend on the size of the bulb.

Small and medium-sized bulbs, most likely, will not bloom next year - they can be planted for growing in a more modest but sunny place, out of sight. And for planting large bulbs, we will choose the most honorable place.

Sorted, peeled bulbs should be placed in a ventilated, dry, warm room - an attic, a shed, a country house. They will be stored there until the autumn planting at a temperature of 25-28 ° C.

As soon as the tulips have bloomed and the petals have fallen off, you cannot immediately dig up the bulbs and cut off the foliage. But what to do with them next? Considering that immediately after the end of the flowering process, the bulb begins to accumulate nutrients and useful substances, as well as its formation, you need to continue to water the flower and fertilize the soil. In this case, the seed material will turn out to be strong and fruitful, suitable for the re-growth of flowers.

When the flowering process has come to an end and the last bud of the tulip has dried up, it is necessary to continue to carefully care for the flowers in the flower bed. What can you do to form healthy bulbs suitable for re-growth in the soil of your garden or potted house? First of all, you need to continue to water the plant until the buds are cut off.

The sequence of actions after the tulips have bloomed:

In order to form large, dense and healthy bulbs of any kind of tulip, you need to cut the flower about one week after the last bud has blossomed (before the petals begin to crumble). Thanks to this, all the energy of the plant will go to building up the mass of bulbs.
Do not allow the accumulation of petals in the leaf axils, so that the decay process does not begin. Fallen petals must be removed in a timely manner.
You can cut off the leaves only after they completely change color to dark yellow. Otherwise, you can involuntarily slow down the growth of the bulb.
Bulbs should be checked for readiness on one flower. The onion shovel should be driven to a good depth to avoid damaging the roots. The formed bulb is characterized by the presence of brownish-brown spots on the scales and small roots.

When watering a faded flower, it is necessary to use a lot of liquid, since the root system will not be able to feed on moisture from the deep layers of the soil. The soil in the garden bed should be at least 40 cm wet.

When to cut a flower?

In most tulip varieties, the process of shedding dead leaves, peduncles and arrows occurs independently, but some varieties need additional help in the form of pruning dry shoots.

You can cut off the leaves and arrows after the tulip has faded, only when they have completely wilted. It is impossible to cut off all the floral elements at the same time, because even after the end of flowering, chemical processes continue to occur in these parts of the plant, thanks to which the bulbs feed on useful elements. Pruning the leaves ahead of time will stop feeding the bulbs, which can lead to their death.

You can cut off all the leaves remaining on the trunk and the pedicel itself no earlier than 30 days after the flowering is completely completed. Each variety of flowers has a different stage of bulb formation, so you should start from a specific situation, but on average, 30-35 days is enough.

A video on how to properly trim faded leaves can be seen below.

Do I need to further fertilize the soil?

To get strong and high-quality tulip bulbs, it is not enough just to water the soil and not touch the green leaves, you need to continue to fertilize the soil around them. Bulbs need minerals such as phosphorus, potassium and nitrogen to grow well.

The deficiency of nutrients negatively affects the growth of the flower: the stem becomes thin, the buds are small, poorly formed, and new bulbs appear in insufficient numbers. Fertilizing the land is required not only during the growing season, but also after the end of flowering.

The earth needs to be fertilized with a solution of 1 bucket of water and 2 tbsp. l. fertilizer that contains potassium or phosphorus.

When to dig up the bulbs?

It is undesirable to leave tulip bulbs permanently in the ground, therefore it is recommended to dig them out every year. After the end of flowering, it is possible to get the planting material out of the soil no earlier than all the leaves, peduncles and the stem are cut off.

The most suitable period for digging out tulip planting material is summer, namely the last week of the 1st month or the beginning of the 2nd. The procedure can be carried out only in dry, preferably sunny weather. First of all, you need to dig out the early varieties of flowers, and later later.

What to do next with them? Peeled bulbs should be carefully inspected for rot or other damage. If the tuber is soft or watery, then it should be thrown out, since the flower will not grow again from such a bulb. Healthy planting material should be dense, with overgrown roots and brownish scales. Then strong bulbs should be dipped in a potassium permanganate solution (5%) for about 3-5 minutes. After that, lay the planting material on a flat surface and allow it to dry.

The bulbs must be properly stored until the next planting in the garden or garden bed. A spacious box is suitable for storage, in which air can circulate, for example, with a mesh bottom. Bulbs can be individually wrapped with thick newsprint. Then the planting material is laid out in a box, maybe even in two layers. After that, the box will need to be removed to a warm place with low humidity and temperature:

1st month in the range from 22 to 26 degrees Celsius;
2nd - from 20 to 22 degrees Celsius;
3rd - 15-17 degrees Celsius.

It is impossible to allow a sharp change in the temperature regime, because this can cause the death or weakening of the bulbs.

When to plant bulbs?

The tulip bulbs dug out after the end of flowering should be stored immediately until they are planted in the ground. The most suitable time for planting bulbs is spring or autumn, the main thing is that the air temperature does not drop below 5-7 degrees Celsius.

Before planting the bulbs in the soil, they should be carefully examined after the husks have been peeled to make sure there are no foci of disease. If the planting material is contaminated, it should be discarded. However, if these are expensive or rare tulips, you can try cutting out a piece of infected tissue along with a small piece of healthy tissue. Then the cut site should be dried and treated with a fungicide. Damaged bulbs will need to be planted separately from other flowers.

The place for rooting tulips must be located so that a lot of sunlight falls on it and there are no drafts. The bulbs should be thoroughly disinfected with a solution of 5% potassium permanganate before planting.

Note: It is undesirable to reuse one piece of land for planting and growing tulips.

Instructions for planting tulips in open ground:

dig holes 15 cm deep for large bulbs, and 6 cm for children;
the distance between the rows should be approximately 30 cm;
in each hole you need to add a little river sand, as well as wood ash, to make the soil more ventilated;
the soil must be moistened so that it becomes enveloping;
the bulbs must be planted at a distance of about 10-13 cm from each other;
then the bulbs need to be watered.

Plant the bulbs so that they can take root before the first frost begins. In winter, the soil should be covered with peat or humus.

What should be done next with tulips that have faded? The first time, while the bulbs are fed with nutrients, it is necessary to continue to take care of the flower in the usual manner. The soil should be watered regularly and fertilized with calcium and phosphorus. You can cut off the stem and dig up the bulbs about 1 month after flowering has ended.