I would whack off all foliage. Next year do the same. Eventually it will die.

yeah... for any of the hybridized tulips i don't try to keep the going so i just rip them out.. sometimes it's leaves and other times it's with the bulbs. The ones where the bulbs stay in the ground... on just small fraction do i get returning small 4-5" leaves the next year which i just yank out again with that years tulips. Over the years I've just designated a few contained areas for annual tulips that I swap in annual flowers. Any of the ones i had mixed in with my periennials just start becoming a nuisance since i want to try and keep them going... but end up with poorly performing leaves.

I guess I’m the Devil’s Advocate type here :-). It’s been at least 10 years since I planted tulips and some go back 20 years! Some are ‘botanical’ tulips that naturalize well and will spread by seed. But some are Darwin Hybrids or other named varieties. Not all naturalize as quickly, but they all have some returning each year. All are planted in mixed beds (i.e. planted with bulbs, perennials, shrubs, and even trees in some beds...). You do need to have some patience to allow the foliage to ripen and go dormant, but that’s not usually a big issue in a mixed bed with dense plantings. Botanical tulips tend to have their foliage ‘disappear’ more gracefully and quicker than the big tulips. On the big tulips, I cut the flowerstalk to the base after the flower fades, which minimizes the visual distraction of the dying foliage of the big tulips. The ‘baby’ bulbs of the big tulips do take a few years to get big enough to bloom, but IME they always do eventually, and it is interesting to see them reappear in a few years.

I think it very much depends on your conditions. I have had very few tulips perennialise for me despite never, ever, having cut down foliage or pulled up bulbs. Even ones which have come back for a few years have dwindled in the end.

floral_uk - I wonder if it is our colder winter here that makes a difference in the tulip survival/naturalizing. Our winter - and a lot of the rest of the year too - would likely be drier than yours too. I’d bet those two aspects might be important factors in why your tulips don’t naturalize and mine do....

The species tulips do come back and spread slowly each year. I really am leaning to them. For the hybrids, if i water that bed at all during the year... it makes them not flower much the following year, but one bed i can let the leaves go dormant naturally since I have some salvia cover them up at the same time. I never water this bed and the hybrids come up each year nicely.

I agree. Under the right conditions they will come back for years, but no one seems able to agree on a reason why or why not. I used to think it was dry summers or cold winters, but when I dig tulips as the foliage goes yellow it's already easy to see which are set to bloom next year and which will only produce a single leaf.

the large weird leaf description.. reminds me of Ts that ended up in too much shade ... growing giant greens to try to store energy in the bulb for next year.. and never really saving enough to actually get to bloom ..

when you get that new garden fork.. why not try to pop them out ...

at worst.. it would be aerating the soil ... and if you find out.. they are too deep to do that.. that might also give you a clue why they are failing .... too deep ...

ken

Most of those who have tulips - other than the botanicals - return year after year are growing some type of Darwin or fosteriana hybrids. These have the best reputation for perennialization but even that is a bit of a toss up. The flowering might be good for a few years but the bulbs do weaken and eventually flowering becomes very hit or miss.

Even commercial bulb growers acknowledge this unfortunate attribute - hybrid tulips just do not perennialize well. I'm not sure winter cold necessarily has much to do with how well they return....they do not originate from cold winter climates. They favor a Mediterranean type climate - mild winters and warm but dry summers. Not watering during their summer dormancy should help, provided rainfall is also minimal as well.

From the reading I’ve been doing, my understanding is that tulips originate in mountainous, temperature climate areas, including the Asian steppes, so cold and dry are part of the conditions they need. The conditions here would seem to suit them well as we certainly get cold during the winter, often with not too much snow; spring tends to be long and cool; summer can be hot and humid but there are usually long dry spells too. The garden beds where our tulips are planted are rarely watered other than by rainfall. Darwin and Fosteriana hybrids as well as various Botanical tulips are our main tulips. As I said previously, it’s been many years since we planted new tulips and we still have lots show up each spring so don’t feel much need to plant more. I suspect there are many more gardens with conditions similar to ours where tulips would naturalize if the gardener had the patience to allow them to do so. Planting them in a mixed bed makes it easier to tolerate the going-dormant phase than if they are in a dedicated tulip bed.

There seems to be enough of an issue, even with the commercial growers, that most hybrid tulips do NOT perennialize well that most tend to treat them as annual bulbs. Those that can get them to return and bloom successfully for however long should just consider themselves lucky as it is by no means a guaranteed phenomenon regardless of where or how they are planted.

If you fertilize, do so in the fall or very early spring when the roots are growing. Fertilizing now is ok, but not as effective since much of the growth is already done, and depending on what and how you fertilize it may take some time to work its way down to where the roots are.