danilis, I would like to know too! I have planted hyacinth bulbs with some daffodil bulbs. Yes, this year I will have big hyacinth, but next year smaller. :(
I don't want to have to replace them, as that would disturb the daffodil bulbs already in place.
The only information I can find is:
"The usual way to propogate Hyacinth bulbs is to dig them up in the early summer after their leaves have yellowed, and cut a half-inch-deep criss-cross through the basal plate; replant the bulbs, and by the following fall they should have produced bulblets where the original bulb was cut. Pull these off, replant them in a cold frame for the winter, and leave them there for several seasons before planting them in the garden."
This is not much help, as most of us don't have a cold frame, or don't have the time to take "several seasons" before planting them in the garden!
So, I may just let the bulbs be where they are and hope for the best, or replant some this fall, (maybe I plant them separate from the daffodils).
Sorry, which I could be more help, but like I said I would like to know that answer too! :)

kentstar

Count me too among those who would like to know.

I'm just guessing here, but think I may try my theory and see if it 'might' work.

See the bulb pic here.

My idea is to dig the bulb about 6-8 weeks after it has finished blooming.
Break off any new bulblets that are attached to it and replant those in an out of the way place so they can grow up to big bloom size.
Dry and store the mother bulbs in a cool dark place like one would daffodils, waiting until fall planting time.
Once the soil temp in the fall had dropped to 55 degrees F, then plant the mother bulbs.

I think it is because the hyacinth so readily propagates bulblets that it drains the mother bulb, resulting in smaller blooms...unlike daffodils that divide and multiply with the bloom size not being affected until they become too crowded (and small) to bloom.

What does anyone think? While I do not relish digging them annually, I would consider doing some that way to save having to purchase them yearly each fall.

I have 2 new varieties I planted last fall, and think I will try the above theory on them to see how big next springs blooms will be.

Sue

I dig my hyacinths every year since they must be chilled. I have never seen a bulblet on a bulb, so I doubt this is the reason they grow smaller. It would truly be interesting to know what the dutch do. Perhaps it's their climate?

My guess is that it's a combination of a few things. First is that the bulbs are dug and replanted each year. Second is that the spring is long and cool, once the hot weather hits I think most spring bulbs start to go dormant, even before storing enough energy for good blooms. Finally I think they may remove the blooms as soon as they are up, without flowers all the energy the leaves produce goes down into making the bulb and future blooms larger.

It's my understanding that the tulip fields are "beheaded" soon after they open for the same reason.

.... but of course I don't know any of this for sure. If someone wants to fund a "research" trip to Holland, let me know!!

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:8935}}

I dig my hyacinths every year since they must be chilled. I have never seen a bulblet on a bulb, so I doubt this is the reason they grow smaller.
I'm sure yours bloom earleir than mine do, but when do you dig yours? About 6 weeks after the blooms fade?

All of mine grow bulblets. The first year there will be a nice sized full bloom. The second year there will be a smaller less filled out bloom and maybe the foliage to a second bulb near it, or a second even smaller bloom.

If someone wants to fund a "research" trip to Holland, let me know!!
Will do Kato!

This is very interesting. Yes, Sue, I do wait until the foliage begins to brown before I dig my bulbs. It may well be our climate that keeps them from off-setting. It's just not overly hospitable to hyacinths, although I have one friend (my non-gardener one) who bought hyacinths from a school child years ago, and they come up every year AND bloom with no chill, no fertilizer, in the most horrible soil imaginable. Go figure.

Ladychroe, I eye those Festivals every year. I keep hoping that Old House will get the old Romans that are supposed to do well in the deep south, but if they don't come out with them soon, I may have to try the Festivals. I am glad to hear about them from someone who grows them. I agree with you, I rather like the looser, airier look of subsequent years of bloom.

Thank you for the replies :-)

I guess the stratagem to cut away the flowers for few years can improve the bulb's size and it is what is done in Holland. I will not do it of course but I'm going to fertilize my bulbs much in order to have a good flowering the next year ;)

I planted hyacinth last year and they came up great. I just left them in the ground to see if they would rebloom, and sure enough they have. Yes, they are smaller, but most of them have more than one stalk, they still smell and look nice.

I think they cut the flower off very early to get the larger bulbs. I suppose you could do that, but that would mean skipping a year or two. You could try cutting off the secondary flower in hopes that the next year's one will be bigger.

Other than that, I think you would need new bulbs.

I replanted my bulbs from last year, the large and small, after digging them, and they're coming up, we'll see how they do. I ordered them from colorblends, my favorite site, and they send HUGE bulbs, so I think it might easier to get a couple of years out those, here in the south.

Zenobia the site you posted above is really interesting and seems a good seller but unfortunatly I guess they don't send their bulbs in Italy, where I live, but only to USA countries, do they?

However, I'm not going to cut off my poor Hyacinth's flowers. I will try to fertilize them with my special formula, let's see what will happen.

Dany :)

I plant a few more hyacinths every year. I never dig them. They seem to prefer slightly raised beds with rich soil and excellent drainage. I tried Festival blue this year. They looked a little thin to me. Maybe next year they will improve.

Second year blooms are not as lush as the first year, but they regain strength in the second and subsequent years. Many will split over time, giving more than one stem of blooms.

You can see some of my results on my blog. I never discard a forced hyacinth.

Nell

Here is a link that might be useful: Hyacinth Pages on my Blog.

I have the pink festival hyacinths. Very prolific! I wish they came in more than 3 colors and were more widely available. I bought them at Scheepers end of season sale 5 or so years ago and could pave my garden with them by now. They are taller than regular hyacinths, leaves are narrower, and some can flop a bit. But they are beautiful, open and lacy looking. I have some of the regular ones too (this will be the third year for them) but did not realize they got smaller over time, just like tulips. Darn! I bought a bunch more last fall (~50), IÂm not sure I would have bothered if I knew.

The post about splitting bulbs interested me.

I have also left in my hyacinth bulbs for the past 5 years, and they still always bloom, but here is an informational website that explains how to propagate them with pictures. I am going to try this year just for fun.

http://www.coopext.colostate.edu/TRA/PLANTS/index.html#http://www.coopext.colostate.edu/TRA/PLANTS/bulbprop.html

Here is a link that might be useful: Colorado State - Propagation of bulbs

Interesting link, thanks. Seems like a lot of work! But might be worth it for a rare variety.

The loose-flowered "Festival" type, produces MANY offsets that very quickly become blooming size. I bought 10 maybe 4-5 years ago and now have enough to plant in every bed. I tried to remove them from one bed where I decided not to grow bulbs anymore: and even though I thought I had it cleared 2 years ago, there must have been small offsets still there, because this year I see lots of flowers forming. The bigger bulbs throw up multiple stems.

I actually planted a lot of hyacinths in the last two falls. I didnÂt know they were not increasers like the Festival type. Maybe itÂs just as wellÂitÂs hard enough to keep up with daffodils that reproduce too quickly.

This was the second year for my hyacinths and they came up pretty well - two flower stalks where there was one last year; one very nice and one a little sparse. I think the key is to remove the stalk before it starts to set seeds (but let the flowers be, until they're done). It's the seed production that drains the bulb. I treated these bulbs just like my others - removed the stalk when the flowers were spent (i.e. deadheading them), let the green foliage stay on as long as it was still green, and fertilized a few times pretty well. I think these are the basic rules for any bulb, right? Alana

I planted my hyacinths 15 yrs ago and for a few years had beautiful spikes and then the green leaves would come up. For the last 10 years all I get is a bunch of tall leaves and not one flower spike. Every year I say I am going to dig them up in the fall and replant but today I decided to dig them up and start all over with new ones out of pure frustration. The bulbs were very large when I dug them up and down very deep. Could I have planted them too deep to begin with? Any tips when I start over? I have beautiful madonna lilies in the same bed and they never fail to come up and bloom.

Terri

Terri,
I know this is a year and half later but I just found this thread and wanted to confirm that planting them too deep spoiled the blooms for me, too. I read that hyacinths love the cold so much that you can't kill them by freezing, so in our zones especially, you can feel safe planting them even so shallowly that their noses are peeking out of the ground and they don't mind. I did so and found that they bloomed beautifully, and were much less leggy than the ones that I planted 6+ inches deep. This fall, I am screwing up my courage and doing it again, even though part of me is still terrified lol.

And as for lousy blooming after the first year, that's why I'm here too... After a lot of reading, I'm convinced that the only solution is to "behead" the poor girls for a few years, and I for one just don't have the heart.

p.s. Alana, I saw your post and had an odd moment where I tried to remember writing that post before I realized I had simply run into only the third "other" Alana I have ever "met" lol. Nice to "meet" you. :)

I realize that I am opening an old thread, but I have some different information to add for others who view this thread in the future.

I kept the same hyacinths blooming for over 20 years - accidentally.

I wanted to grow a Japanese iris. The best growers in the Iris Society in Columbus Ohio said it cannot be done here. I tried to create a bog for it by removing dirt in a 3x3 ft area down to about 8 inches. I lined the ditch with unperforated black plastic, and then replaced the dirt.

Because I think of hyacinths as more of an "annual", I did not think it would hurt to place them in my little bog. They LOVED it. Grew and bloomed for over 20 years -- until a shrub grew so big that they were in complete total shade.

Also, think of the way hyacinths are forced indoors -- in pure water. And Holland is lower than sea level. Although it makes sense that Dutch growers probably remove blooms, I wonder if the hyacinths are grown in bogs there.

I am not positive that the bog was the reason, but they are the only hyacinths that have kept blooming for me. Next fall, I may create a little bog by my front door where I place hyacinths.

Farmers in the Netherlands don't grow them in bogs but they do have plentiful rainfall and moisture in the ground. You don't say where you live but if you normally have dry summers the extra moisture in your little bog might have helped. My hyacinths return every year too. I plant out all my water grown Hyacinths. But the flowers are never as densely packed on the stems as the original indoor blooms were. This is because I don't disbud, I don't feed are I don't give them any special soil. The analogy with water forced Hyacinths is a red herring because all the growth comes from energy stored in the bulb in the previous season, not from the water.

anelting_yahoo_com- thanks for the sanity check. We dug them all up because we had to and I will replant SHALLOW and see what happens.

I just found this and am so happy I did! I planted hyacinths a few years ago. They never bloomed. I never dug them up. I'm so happy for this information....although it's too late to dig now, I will do so when the leaves dry out. Thanks everyone for sharing!

Where do you live geographically, Marie? There is no need to dig hyacinths up if you have a winter.

I live in Oklahoma, and have had them several years, but they have never bloomed..

Well, I'm pretty sure lifting isn't the answer if they have never bloomed. If they once bloomed and have grown crowded dividing might help. It may seem a daft question but if they have never flowered are you certain they are Hyacinths? Do you have a picture of them to show, even just the foliage?

Thank you for your help.

Those do not look like Hyacinths to me.

eta the picture posted earlier seems to have disappeared. What's going on?

Marie - when I answered above there was a photo of foliage which was not Hyacinth foliage imo. The picture has now gone and I don't know if you have seen my reply. Are you still reading?

Yes thank you. I saw your reply. I don't know of anything else it could be.

Can you put the picture back up? Someone might have an idea. I grow a lot of hyacinths and yours didn't look right to me. They don't make those big thick clumps of foliage.

but grape hyacinths do...

I'll take another picture. It has been raining but I'll get one up asap.

Camps, the foliage in Marie's previous picture (don't know why it disappeared) wasn't Muscari. It was a larger, broader, flat bladed leaf. I'm wondering if it was Galtonia candicans 'Summer 'Hyacinth'?

This is the plant

Thanks for the picture, Marie. Sadly it doesn't really help much apart from reinforcing my opinion that these are not Hyacinths. Can you show the whole plant? And put something in to show the scale? You put up another picture before. Don't you have it anymore?

Resurrection lilies? Lycoris squamigera . I have a couple I dug from my parent's house a good 10 years ago. Never bloomed. Just the foliage shows up in the spring.