Yes: leaves of green plants make food, if you shorten the amount of the already comparatively brief time your bulbs are in leaf they will store less energy for next year's performance.

Another option is to carefully dig them and move them to a less visible (but still sunny) area to finish their in-leaf season there. Spring flowering bulbs of Mediterranean and vicinity origin (such as crocus and tulips) like to be cleaned (do not remove skins) after their leaves wither and stored for the summer, replanted in autumn anyway. As opposed to being left in beds that will be rained upon and/or watered all summer.

So you could do that as well, if you wanted to bother with it.

in my MI ... they bloom in cold soil.. so i presume.. most of the energy they use to bloom is stored energy ... from inside the corm ... [basically the same logic for all early spring blooming bulbs ..]

soooo .. after they spend all that energy.. you have to leave the old leaves.. well the soil warms.. and recharges the stored energy into the corms ... so they will bloom next year ...

if you dont.. you MIGHT not have as strong a bloom net season ...

i know its not all neat and tidy.. but most of the garden isnt this time of year.. so go work on something else ... and when you finally get back to these.. in a few weeks.. they will be semi rotted.. and you will be able to grab the whole mess with one swipe.. and be done with it ..

also .. leaving it all there .. reminds you not to dig them up.. when you might be planting annuals... ruining the nice little clump that has developed ...

ken

You just need to give them a gentle combing to at least get all the leaves going in the same direction.... you got chicken hair there going every which way.

IME, crocus foliage ripens and disappears remarkably fast. Mine bloomed in late February and has been fully dry and brown for at least a month or more and I just clear them out of the way when I am weeding or working in a particular area. Unlike the daff or tulip foliage, which seems to hang around forever!

Lifting tulips I get, but I've never heard of lifting crocuses. Most are very reliably perennial and expand every year without any help and oblivious to wet summers. Plus lifting hundreds of tiny corms without losing the new ones growing on top of the old would require a lot more patience than I have.

I have come across nurseries offering crocus 'in the green' so I think that lifting and replanting is done a fair bit on a commercial level.

crocus foliage ripens and disappears remarkably fast.

==>> on some level.. its a function of ambient heat ... and the further north you go.. the slower that occurs ... im still having nights dipping into the 40s ... thats a refrigerator.. so every night.. the process is slowed .... i expect this to end very soon ...

cold springs.. and it seems to linger a longish time ..

a warmer/hot spring.. and they seem to yellow faster ...

ken

There was talk of lifting and moving, letting the leaves die down, all fine but then there was reference to crocus liking to be cleaned and stored for replanting in autumn. It was the requirement for lifting and storing the corms that I was taking issue with.