Planting, Growing, and Harvesting Tulip Bulbs

Seasonal notes on planting tulips, watching them develop, and learning what it takes to harvest bulbs well.

• Tulips
• Garden
• Infrastructure

This year, my garden decided I would be a Tulip farmer.

It wasn’t on purpose; I’d actually dug up what I thought was “all” of my tulip bulbs last summer and gave them away to family, only to discover this spring that I had missed about as many as I had dug up!

So this season I just let them do their thing. Some bloomed, others just grew leaves and put energy into further developing the bulbs. After the blooms sarted fading, I dead-headed all the ones that had flowered so they too could focus on storing energy back in the bulb and any that they had produced. At the end of June or early July, I’ll dig up all the ones I can find, sort them by size, and offer up the ones that are most likely to bloom next year, while saving enough to keep growing stock next year.