You may get some differing opinions but IME, 8 years is a very long time to have any sort of reliable booming of hybrid tulips!! And that is despite any sort of fertilization. They are just not reliably perennial and most treat them as very short lived, if not annual, bulbs. They will continue to produce foliage but flowering will dwindle away to nothing, usually much faster than your 8 year experience.

You can go ahead and divide if you wish but I am not sure that is going to produce any better results. I would just go ahead and replant with fresh stock this fall. And FWIW, I have not found any fertilization - in reasonably fertile well drained soil -makes any difference in bulb health or flower production. I generally consider it unnecessary.

Good to know. I have read a lot of articles saying to treat them as annuals. Makes me wonder how the bulb producers "manufacture" so many bulbs ready to flower. Thank you for the feedback.

Well, just watched a few videos on how these beauties are produced in Holland. Apparently if you can't have nice flowers. The flowers basically kill the plant. To make the healthy blooming size plants, the small bulbs are grown in very rich well drained soil, and the plants are "topped" in late April when they put up bloom stalks. This means they cut all of the buds off. The plant then puts all of it's energy into the bulb. If the buds are not cut off, they will use themselves up blooming and fade away after a couple of years. It seems that if you want nice clumps of tulips in the garden, you have to have 1. Ideal growing conditions, 2. Rich, well drained soil, and 3. Allow the plants to rest from year to year by cutting off the flowers every other spring so the plant can recover. Given that my plants look really healthy and seem to like the spot, maybe I will have some flowers next year, though I should probably cut the buds off and give it an additional year to grow. Pretty much makes them useless from a gardener's perspective.

Also, the original bulb dies after blooming and the bulblettes form at the base of the parent bulb, so with each bloom cycle the bulbs end up deeper and deeper, therefore they need to be dug up and re-planted regularly. After 8 years, I probably have to dig waayyyy down to get the bulbs out.

Cheers,

Werner

Albert, Baltimore Maryland actually has extreme temperatures similar to the native habitat of the tulip. We can have zero Fahrenheit in winter, and 105 Fahrenheit in summer. The major distinction between the climates is that there is a much higher amount of summer-time moisture in Baltimore than where these plants hail from. I think I have not had a problem with drainage and moisture because of my specific location. These bulbs are planted in side-walk tree pits so there is next to zero moisture percolation from the surrounding soil. The location allows around 8-10 hours of direct sun during the growing season. It would seem I inadvertently have an ideal location for tulips, however I have been allowing them to bloom themselves out of energy.

https://www.tulips.com/bulbs_expert_tips

Detailed advice from the bulb farms.