When to prune tulips after flowering? Secrets of excellent care for tulips after flowering Tulips have bloomed, what's next for them.

Our conversation will be about when to dig up 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 that's not true.

Why do you need to dig up tulips after flowering?

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

There is another reason that tulips need to be dug up. After flowering, the bulbs must 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 25ºС. But the deeper you go, the lower the soil temperature. The further north tulips grow, the more difficult it is to provide them with the required temperature at depth.

Thus, there are at least two reasons why it is necessary to select tulips from the soil after flowering:

• avoid natural deepening of the bulbs;
• Ensure the storage temperature is not lower than 25ºС for the formation of a full-fledged flower arrow.

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

By leaving the bulbs untouched in the ground, we obviously contribute to the crushing of flowers, since several children are formed next to one bulb, which will also germinate in the spring. We will get a bunch of tulip sprouts that will interfere with each other’s growth and development; they will also not have enough nutrition. As a result, every year we will get smaller and smaller flowers in the flowerbed. In addition, remaining in the ground, tulip bulbs accumulate diseases, and bloom on next year will be later than usual.

For better formation of the flower arrow after flowering, immediately cut off all flower stalks, do not allow the seed box to ripen.

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

That's right, deepening will not happen, 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 rather than increase.

By planting tulips and other bulbs in plastic bulb baskets, you make the digging job much easier and faster. All the bulbs - large, medium, small - are in one place, it is impossible to miss them or leave them in the ground.

Digging time

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

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

There is another reference point - the color of the outer scales of the bulbs. Ripe tulip bulbs should have brown outer scales.

The excavation must be done very carefully. I use a pitchfork for this purpose, since a shovel can damage the bulbs. Then I go through the dug up area with a trident manual cultivator, since it is undesirable to leave children - small bulbs - in the ground - this will simply clog the future flowerbed and 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 in different time. Postponing this work late dates Until all varieties bloom, you risk not finding the place where the early flowers grew. It will also be easier to sort the bulbs by variety. 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 up bulbs are dried on outdoors definitely in the shade. The timing of pre-drying depends on what soil you dug them from. If the soil was dry, then 2-5 days are enough, and if it was wet, then the drying time increases - sometimes up to 2 weeks.

Then you need tulips, or rather, bulbs:

• clear from earth;
• remove the covering scale, the one that easily separates itself;
• tear off old dried roots;
• sort the bulbs by size.

Sorting into small, medium, and large is mandatory, since the depth of planting in the fall and the planting location 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 - attic, barn, country house. They will be stored there until autumn planting at a temperature of 25-28ºС.

Tulips are very beautiful during flowering, but this period does not last long. Literally after a few days the flowers begin to fade and no longer look so attractive. Not all flower growers know how to care for tulips after flowering, and make annoying mistakes when trying to immediately cut or dig up the bulbs.

What to do after the tulips bloom

Caring for tulips after flowering is quite simple. The main rule is that flowers cannot be cut or dug up immediately. It is recommended to water and feed the plant well for several weeks. This feature is due to the fact that when the flower fades, the tulip bulbs continue to accumulate nutrients for about three weeks. Premature digging deprives them of this opportunity, so next year Tulip blooms may be less abundant.

After final wilting, the peduncle is carefully removed. This will allow the plant not to waste energy on the need to ripen seeds. It is impossible to cut the leaves immediately, since when they are removed immediately after flowering, the development of the bulbs lags. It is necessary to provide the tulips with sufficient watering and fertilize them with fertilizers.

Many gardeners at this time have a desire to remove yellow leaves, but you shouldn't do this. Experienced gardeners It is recommended to simply press them to the ground or plant perennial plants along with tulips to give the flowerbed an aesthetic appearance during this period. You can decorate your flower garden during this period by first planting daffodils or phlox along with tulips.

Within a few weeks, the tulip leaves will wither naturally and can be cut off. In order not to lose the place where the flowers are planted after the leaves dry, it is recommended to first make guide marks by which you can easily find it.

Tulips: care after flowering

Tulips are bulbous species and do not require particularly careful care, but they have special requirements regarding watering. The watering rate is 10-40 liters per square meter, but it directly depends on the weather. The drier the weather, the more abundant watering should be..

Feeding tulips after flowering must be carried out without fail. This procedure will allow the flower bulbs to gain maximum amount nutrients. The choice of fertilizers must be approached with caution, since Feeding tulips with fertilizer complexes containing nitrogen and chlorine is unacceptable.

The use as a top dressing has a beneficial effect on the storage of bulbs. potassium and phosphorus. This complex is applied in an amount of 30-40 grams per square meter of soil. It is enough to fertilize the plant once.

Crystalline and aquarine are considered good supplements. The fertilizer contains phosphorus, potassium and nitrogen. On the gardening market today you can buy various brands, the composition of which may differ slightly. Such products do not contain chlorine, so they are considered completely safe for tulips. Their use allows you to: provide the onions with a sufficient amount of nutrients. As a result of introducing a complex composition into the soil, a significant increase in high-quality planting material can be obtained.

Why you need to dig

It is imperative to dig up tulips. You cannot leave the bulbs in the ground, because when this rule is not followed, then the plant degenerates and the flower stalks become very small. Many beginning flower growers face this situation when, a few years after planting expensive varieties of tulips, instead of double, fringed, multi-colored flowers, you see weak flowers with small inflorescences. In exceptional cases, flowers simply do not grow, and there is no time to blooming flower bed an empty space appears.

To explain this situation, it is enough to know about the features bulbous plants. Over time, many small baby bulbs form around the parent head. Over time, they grow, which leads to the drowning of the mother's head downwards. Weak bulbs are not capable of producing a full-fledged, lushly flowering plant.

Red varieties of tulips are considered the most persistent, as they can maintain abundant flowering for several years.

Tulips have bloomed: what to do next

After the leaves of the plant have completely withered, you can start digging up flowers. It is recommended to dig up bulbs from the end of June to the second ten days of July. Digging can be done with a shovel or using bayonet shovel. To avoid the possibility of damage to the heads, it is recommended to focus on the remains of dry stems. It is recommended to first assess the readiness of the planting material for this procedure. To do this, one onion is dug out and a visual inspection is carried out. Healthy tulip bulb dense, smooth and has a slight shine. You can start digging up flowers if the following signs are present:

• onions have good roots;
• visible on scales brown spots;
• the ends of the stem can easily be wound around your finger.

Most varieties of tulips are recommended to be dug up annually. Disease-resistant varieties can be dug up once every 2 years.. It is best to remove the bulbs from the soil on a sunny day, as this will result in dry, clean bulbs. When digging, the following rules should be observed:

• the shovel must be deepened carefully, otherwise the roots may be damaged;
• digging begins with early varieties;
• Bulbs with defects are subject to rejection.

Before work, you should prepare in advance carton boxes and make inscriptions about which varieties or colors of tulips are in it. In the future such simple steps allow you to avoid confusion with planting varieties and errors in color combinations.

After digging, all planting material is washed under running water and thoroughly dried. It is recommended to do pickling onions with 5% manganese solution. If the planting material has high humidity, then during storage it will rot and crack.

For good drying, it is enough to keep the heads in a dry room for 14 days at a temperature of 22-25 C 0. During this period, the formation of a bud and flower stem occurs. If at this time the temperature is low, then such formation does not occur and the bulb may not bloom next year.

Care and storage rules after digging

After completing the drying stage, you can begin sorting the planting material. Each bulb is cleared of scales. Children are separated from each adult bulb and placed in a separate container. At the same time, diseased and defective material is rejected and the bulbs are sorted by size.

All planting material is placed in boxes, which are placed for storage in a dry, dark room. It is recommended to use containers with a mesh bottom. The onions should be laid out in no more than two layers. For the first 4 weeks, the bulbs are stored at a temperature of 23-25 ​​C 0. Gradually the temperature is reduced to 17 C 0.

Proper care for tulips and following the storage rules will allow the bulbs to rest and next year you can expect abundant flowering from them.

Everyone loves tulips - a bright riot of colors, early flowering, decorative properties. One bad thing is that their eyelids are too short. April and May have flown by, the tulips have faded, what to do next? Do I need to continue caring for faded plants? How to use the free space in garden design? When to dig and plant bulbs? Let's discuss these and other issues in more detail.

Care after flowering

To understand biological features tulip, you need to see which ones natural conditions his genetics was formed. And these are the steppe and semi-desert regions of Asia with in early spring and summer heat, which warms the soil to great depths. Hence the development cycle of bulbous flowers:

• spring growing season;
• bloom;
• division and ripening of the bulb;
• period of summer rest (warming up);
• autumn planting;
• period of winter dormancy (cooling);
• spring growing season.

From the sequence of biological rhythms we see that caring for tulips after flowering should be aimed at the formation and maturation of strong, healthy bulbs.

Continue regular watering for 2 weeks after flowering. Make sure that the ground is wet to a depth of 30–40 cm. The roots of the tulip are not adapted to extract water from the lower layers of the soil, therefore they are sensitive to surface moisture.

When flowering comes to an end, feed the plants with complex mineral fertilizers, which contain potassium and phosphorus. This portion of nutrition will go towards the formation of scales of the replacement bulb and the growth of the children. Dissolve 30–40 g of granular fertilizers in a bucket of water and water at the rate of 10 l/m².

Remove wilted flowers and seeds in a timely manner. A seed pod left on the stem detracts nutrition from the bulb, preventing it from fully forming.

As you can see, to care for tulips after flowering, a simple set of procedures is enough - not labor-intensive and not time-consuming.

Important! Some gardeners, unknowingly, cut off the leaves of tulips immediately after flowering. This cannot be done! Without the above-ground part, the growth of the bulb stops. When cutting flowers, leave at least 2 bottom sheets.

Excavation and storage

By the second half of June, the foliage and stems of the tulips will turn yellow and dry out - the time for digging has come. The question of how often to do this has been debated by more than one generation of gardeners. It all depends on climatic conditions and varietal properties. Based biological needs, in July-August the bulb needs heating at a temperature of 23–25⁰С. IN steppe zone, in the subtropics the soil warms up to such temperatures, but in central Russia? Definitely not. In addition, if the bulbs are not dug up for a number of years, degeneration occurs - the flowers become smaller, varietal characteristics disappear, and the reproduction rate decreases.

Replanting tulips after flowering - necessary element agricultural technology of flower culture. The dug up bulbs are thoroughly dried for a week in a warm, shaded, ventilated place. After this, the planting material is cleaned of roots and old scales, sorted by size, and diseased and damaged specimens are discarded.

Tulips are stored until planting - for 2–2.5 months. At this time, the flower bud is being laid for the next year, so it is important to create optimal conditions. Temperature during the initial storage period it should be higher (23–25⁰С), after 1–1.5 months it is reduced to 15–18⁰С, at the time of planting it is brought closer to natural conditions (10–12⁰С). To ensure that the bulbs “breathe,” sprinkle them in 1–2 layers, and do not allow the outer scales to dry out.

How to plant a flower bed after tulips?

The unsightly appearance of faded tulips and withered leaves spoils the appearance of the garden. When designing tulip flower beds after flowering, gardeners use several proven methods.

Growing in baskets

Planting bulbs in special perforated containers is gaining popularity among gardeners. This is convenient when digging up planting material - the bulbs do not “spread”. But, most importantly, immediately after flowering, the baskets, along with the soil and bulbs, can be removed from the flowerbed and, with a little digging, left to ripen in an inconspicuous corner of the garden. This method completely solves the problem of when to replant tulips after flowering in order to have time to decorate the flower beds with summer flowers.

Planting annual seedlings

If you plant tulips in dense groups, then by digging up the bulbs in mid-June, you will have time to plant the vacated beds with late-blooming annuals. To do this, grow seedlings in individual containers. Salvia, zinnia, petunia, begonia, and marigolds take root well, do not get sick, and grow quickly. You can plant annual dahlias, antirrinum, chrysanthemums - they will delight you with flowering until late autumn.

Selection of decorative neighbors

Widely used design technique“decorative neighborhood”, which allows you to disguise the unsightly appearance of faded plants. Plants with different periods of growing season and flowering are selected, but so that they actively grow no earlier than the second half of May. The generally accepted “neighbors” of tulips are perennial hostas, astilbes, and ferns. If you don’t plan to dig up tulips, groundcovers such as sedum, phlox, periwinkle, and purslane are ideal.

Note! If ripening tulip bulbs are adjacent to other plants, be careful with watering. Excessive waterlogging can lead to rotting of planting material.

It is known that tulips need care not only during the growing season. Giving them the right to lush flowering again is quite possible with proper care and following a few simple rules.

Depending on the variety, tulips begin to bloom from March to June. Flowering lasts from one week to three, then the plants begin to lose their appearance and gradually fade. However, this is not a reason to stop caring for them.

Do I need to trim tulips after flowering?

In order to maintain the size of the buds, it is necessary to trim the tulips after each flowering. This is due to the fact that during the growing season, the plant forms a new young bulb (sometimes several bulbs) underground, inside which a shoot and next year’s flower are initially born. For better ripening of the future bulb and preservation of all the nutrients it needs, you need to free the peduncle from the old bud.

Tulip refers to perennial plants: Its development from seed to flowering state takes three to seven years. And if you properly care for this plant, it will form lush buds every year.

When and how to prune tulips after flowering?

There are several subtleties to the process of pruning tulips after they have bloomed. You need to wait until the plant petals become dry and easily separate from the stem. Next, you need to first mark the location of the tulip bulbs in the soil, so that when digging them up it will be easier to find them.

The pruning tool must be disinfected with alcohol-containing wipes or liquid (you can also use potassium permanganate and ferrous sulfate for this) and wipe dry with a clean rag.

If you decide to take more from the flowerbed blooming tulips for a bouquet, then in this case the stems of the plants should not be cut, but carefully broken, leaving at least two lower leaves on them: the flower will need them to restore its strength.

Do I need to water and fertilize tulips in the spring after they bloom?

After flowering ends, tulips need to continue to be watered for another two weeks.

You can feed tulips in the spring for lush flowering with fertilizers containing nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. But if the blooming tulips have not been fed, then after pruning them the soil must be fertilized with phosphorus and potassium, mixed in equal proportions at the rate of 30-35 g of mixture per sq.m.

It will not be superfluous mineral fertilizers, containing manganese, zinc and boron. You should not fertilize tulips with manure: it can cause the bulbs to rot. Chlorine is also contraindicated for these flowers.

When are tulip bulbs dug up?

As a rule, the time to remove tulip bulbs from the soil falls at the end of June - beginning of July, when these plants have already bloomed, but their underground shoots have not yet had time to “get lost.” In the northern regions, this time shifts to mid-July - early August.

You need to dig up tulip bulbs at the moment when approximately two-thirds of their leaves turn yellow. With earlier harvesting, the plant will not have time to form high-quality planting material, and later harvesting will lead to drying out and loss of the bulb.

After removing the bulbs from the soil, they must be checked for the presence of mold, rot, fusarium and other diseases.

The affected bulbs are thrown away, healthy ones are dried for two to three days under a canopy, protecting them from direct contact with sun rays. Well-dried tulip bulbs are divided into groups, depending on their diameter, cleaned of excess roots and scales and kept in a pink solution of potassium permanganate for at least half an hour. Planting material ready for storage.

In order to preserve the tulip variety, gardeners advise digging up their bulbs annually. This is especially true for new plant species - terry, green-flowered, fringed, parrot. But simple early and simple late tulips, as well as tulips of Kaufman, Foster, Greig, Triumph and Darwin hybrids do not require “updating” for 3–6 years.

How to store tulip bulbs?

Tulip bulbs should be stored in a cool, dry place with good ventilation. With proper maintenance, they will feel great until the autumn planting, which also has its own characteristics.

Plant tulip bulbs in open ground best from mid-September to mid-October.

Achieving beautiful and lush flowering of tulips is not at all difficult: give them attention and they will reciprocate your love.

Tulips are one of the first and most beautiful. It is not for nothing that in Holland they are a national symbol that serves as a source of pride. Countless varieties of these flowers have been bred. They differ in color, bud size, and petal shape. Some of these plants are so unusual that it is difficult to classify them as tulips. These plants are quite unpretentious, but in order for them to please their owners for several years, you need to know how to properly care for tulips. The fact is that these flowers are classified as short plants. This means that the annual life cycle of a tulip is short. It wakes up in early spring, blooms, pleasing the eye, and then falls asleep again. But this plant is a perennial, and the bulb will continue to live until the time comes to wake up and bloom again. Therefore, it is important to know after flowering. After all, it depends on how strong the bulb will wake up by next year. And how beautiful the flower will please the owners.

Bloom

Typically, these plants begin to produce their first green leaves in April. And the flowering itself begins in May and lasts about a week. And then the question of how to care for tulips after flowering becomes relevant. Very often, flower growers ask whether they need to prune a flower when the petals have dried out and fallen off. Experts believe that it is imperative to remove the peduncle (the head that remains after the flower). Otherwise, it begins to take on a significant part of the nutrients in order to form seeds. In this case, the bulb is significantly depleted. And the seeds of tulips, as you know, are not used for propagation. Therefore, when answering the question of how to care for tulips after flowering, it should be noted that the main thing is to allow nutrients to be preserved and accumulate. To do this, the head is cut off, and the green leaves and part of the stem are left.

Caring for tulips after flowering

If the soil dries out, it needs to be loosened. When deciding how to care for tulips after flowering, you must take into account that the plants do not need fertilizing during this period. You need to regularly weed the area where the tulips grow to prevent weeds from sprouting. These seemingly harmless weeds can deplete the soil. But if some weed has become too large and has taken deep roots, you should dig it out carefully, otherwise there is a danger of damaging the delicate tulip bulb. After flowering has ended and the green leaves have aged and dried out, the bulb can be dug up for storage. They are often left to bloom the following year.

Caring for tulips that have finished flowering is not difficult. But, like any work in the garden, it must be done regularly. Then the plants will delight the owners lush flowering next year in the early spring months and will be able to become a real source of pride.