Please note my response to rocketjeremy6. In your location (the same as mine), you should start chilling in a refrigerator about the first of September, after having spent the last few months in a cool dark place. I have a separate refrigerator to prevent bloom damage from gases emitted from fresh fruit in the household refrigerator. I plant mine the first week of December under my roses and they come up in about 6 weeks. They finish blooming about the time the roses leaf out, which makes a good combination. Al

Hey Al.

Thanks for your post. For a second there I was beginning to wonder if my question didn't actually belong on the bulb forum.

I appreciate your feedback. However our weather is a bit more wintery than yours from what you say. By December our ground is frozen solid and you cannot start working again in the garden until at least April usually. That's when the tulips start to break ground. Or not if the weather was long and snowy. So I need to research further I think. I'm trying to work out if I should be digging them up now and just keeping them dry and cool all summer and then replant in October. Last year I bought the bulbs in October and planted them around Halloween some time.

Kate

Kate you must live in a elevation of over 5 thousand feet and tulips would probably do OK if not dug at all. Your temperatures sound like what tulips like. You would plant them deeper and they would be a little later blooming than here. They should be fine in the ground all summer. Al