The most common reasons tulips do not develop their typical long stems is because they were not planted deep enough or did not receive sufficient moisture at a critical stage of development. A shallow planting exposes bulbs to temperature swings and soil moisture fluctuations that a deep planting would avoid. And they need the most water about 3-4 weeks before they flower, so that early spring dry heat wave may be the culprit.

Thanks, gg. I suspect you have nailed the problem. The sprinkler system wasn’t on a month ago.

Also if they don't get enough chilling hours. Are you in a warmer zone? Perhaps they were planted late and didn't experience enough cold?

Another distinct possibility, katob. We are in Zone 7b.

Too late a planting generally results in NO flowers or delayed flowering rather than short stemmed ones. And zone 7b is not too warm for tulips. The largest commercial tulip fields in the US are located not far from me in the Skagit Valley in WA state. They are a zone 8b. No chilling required!!

GG I'm sure you know that a zone designation is based on a winter low, so in terms of bulb growing, Northern/maritime areas such as the Skagit Valley, and actually most of the Netherlands, do well because the winter is long enough and cool enough to provide the necessary chilling hours (temps in the low 40's) while at the same time offer an extended cool growing season which the bulbs grow longer without triggering dormancy.

Zone really has little to do with it. The only reason I mentioned it was to find out more about the soil temps they experienced after planting. All the tulips pictured are short, and that is a symptom of insufficient cooling.

Well I guess we can at least say it's not due to planting too deep!

I was talking to a friend who forces a number of tulips for their Easter sales. He said some growers give their tulips more cold if the flower is to be cut as long stem tulips and sold, and less cold if the flowers are grown for potted flower sales where sturdier, short flowers are more desirable... but he also said he's not a big enough, or has enough controls to have ever tried it himself. Interesting idea though to do it on purpose.

I've seen this same thing with some of my tulips and I attribute it to not enough cold and not enough water, or snow in our area. I garden in Zone 5B, Illinois and we had a mild Winter with very little snow. On the otherhand, the tulips that I forced bloom in our unheated garage did really well. The main difference, the garage is unheated and cold for the Winter months and I watered the bulbs occasionally, never a heavy downpour, but just enough to water the top of the soil.

We always have relatively mild winters with only rare snow and tulips do fine here. But we don’t need to water in winter. Nature does that.