I have various bulb variants that have pewtered off here and there throughout the years in areas where I don't plant bulbs no more, so I don't do much digging up of said areas.

Every year, leaves come up. No bloom. If I simply remove the leaf early, aka, the food source, will this eventually make the bulb go away without me needing to dig it up....(tulips and hyancinths)

Off topic, but the wifey planted a bunch of lilys which we removed 75%. Man, these things are like wildfire. For the past 2 years, I've been yanking out baby lilys *leaf and very small bulb intact when pulled*, in places 2-3 feet away from where there original lily bulbs were planted.