How to Tip-Toe Your Tulips towards Spring Success

Q. Barry in Voorhees, NJ writes: “Last Fall, I planted 50 tulip bulbs in my front lawn. I added an organic bulb fertilizer and waited patiently, but not one shoot came up this Spring. There is plenty of sun. I even made sure I planted them correct side up this time!  Should I just plant new ones?”

A. You should definitely plant new ones Barry, because, in the words of Star Trek’s Dr. McCoy, “they’re dead, Jim.” (He also would have said, “damn it, Jim—I’m a doctor, not a gardener!”)

Tulips were never meant to be grown in lawns. In the God-forsaken mountains of Turkey and Afghanistan where Spring bulbs were originally discovered growing wild, the winters are bitter cold and the summers blazingly hot and dry. That’s why they evolved to emerge right after winter disappeared, thrive in the short-but-perfect climate of Spring and then hide deep underground when the sandstorms struck.

That long, dry period is essential, and planting them in a lawn exposes them to too much moisture from watering. As noted bulb specialist Brent Heath has famously said, “Dormant bulbs like to sleep in a dry bed, just like us.” They can also be smothered by competition from the roots of a lawn.

In addition, tulips are THE most edible member of the Spring bulb family. Evil Squirrels dig them up like we harvest potatoes. Deer browse on them shortly after they emerge in the Spring, perhaps before you even notice the plants being there. Rabbits are also always ready to feed on the flowers.

But the Number One enemy of tulips is/are VOLES. That’s VOLES with a “V”, not moles with an “M”. Covered with fur, voles are about the same size as mice but have shorter tails, smaller ears, and their beady little eyes are beadier than the beady little eyes of mice.

Voles feed on the underground roots of plants and are famous for devouring Spring bulbs. One source suggests that they can burrow a foot down into the soil to reach your tulips never-to-be. Voles DO travel above ground, but you rarely see them. Instead look for the distinctive trails of tramped-down grass they leave behind.

A one-stop way to prevent all herbivore invasion is to only plant foul-tasting toxic bulbs like daffodils, fritillaria and ornamental alliums. If tulips you MUST plant, follow this plan:

• When you plant your bulbs this Fall (between Halloween and Thanksgiving for most of us), plant them in their own bed. Don’t plant them too early in the season; it can interfere with the vernalization they need to flower.
• Surround each tulip bulb with small sharp stones or a commercial product like ‘Vole Bloc’.
• When you’re done planting, remove all of the ‘tulip trash’ like browned-out wrappers and such from the surface of the bed. Otherwise, you’re advertising the presence of the tulips below.
• Then cover up any leftover smells by spraying the bed with a castor oil-based repellant designed for mole and vole control; you’ll find a variety of such products at most garden centers.
• Or even better, mulch the bed with several inches of dog fur, which the Dutch have found to repel Evil Squirrels, voracious voles and just about any other herbivore. Bonus: It’s also death to slugs, who get wrapped up in the hair.
• Don’t feed the bulbs when you plant. The flower that will appear in the Spring is already formed inside the bulb when you plant it in the Fall. The time to feed Spring bulbs is right after their flowers fade in the Spring, when they need food to actively grow the following year’s flowers.
• Don’t use wood mulch! This ridiculous trend of covering everything a foot deep in construction debris and other trash wood that has been chipped and painted some God-awful color never seen in nature makes a perfect home for voles. You might as well build little condos for them.
• When the bulb greenery emerges in the Spring, spray more castor oil or freshen up the dog fur,
• When the flowers fade, clip off the little seedhead that forms at the top of the stalk, but don’t cut the stalk down low (or water will collect in the center and rot the bulb below). Do not molest the green leaves in any way. They have to stay around to absorb the solar energy that will grow next year’s flowers.
• You can clip off the leaves after they turn yellow or brown. If you’re not going to use that spot to grow anything else, you can leave the bulbs in the ground. Otherwise, dig up the bulbs and store them in onion bags in the coldest, driest spot you have indoors until Fall. Otherwise, the bulbs will rot when you water the plants overtop of them.
• Or just grow daffodils.

Note: Barry’s lawn planting was only a bad idea because of the type of bulb he chose. It has long been the fashion in Europe to plant Spring bulbs in lawns, but only the small, early-flowering ones (which used to be called ‘minor bulbs’ but are now called ‘special bulbs’) like Snowdrops and Glory-of Snow. These bulbs emerge in winter (often justifying the ‘Snow’ in their names), and produce greenery that fades by the time the lawn needs its first cutting.