Tulips are one of the first spring flowers that beautifully revitalize the earth and delight the eye with their bright and such different shades.
In order that the decorative types of tulips do not degenerate, and the flowers do not grow smaller, experienced gardeners recommend digging up plant bulbs every year. Due to this, they grow faster, and the bulbs become larger. It should be remembered that children are usually not dug up, but grown for several years in one place.
Be sure not to miss the period when you can most easily dig out tulip bulbs. The leaves of tulips in this period become light yellow in color, and the bulb becomes light brown. In no case should you dig up plants earlier than this period, because this can damage the bulbs and next year, instead of a bright red flower, a small, blind bud may hatch. It is advisable to use a garden pitchfork when digging up tulip bulbs without damaging them is rather difficult. If nevertheless it was not without damage, such bulbs should be destroyed, otherwise they often become ill with a fungus, infecting healthy ones.
If it so happened that you realized that the foliage of tulips was completely fallen, you can still dig up the bulbs, though it will be quite problematic to find them. Still, it is better to observe the plants and remove from the ground when you can dig.
Tulip bulbs extracted from the ground are first sorted, separating low-quality bulbs. For example, tulips having bulbs of irregular shape, damaged by various spots. Most problems can be avoided if you know how and when to dig tulip bulbs.
Dug and sorted plants must definitely be dried. Usually they are stacked in trellised boxes (baskets are also suitable) and put away in the shade, under a canopy. The dried bulbs are cleaned of the earth and roots, and then placed in a potassium permanganate solution for about half an hour. Before planting, plants should be periodically reviewed for manifest diseases or possible decay; such flowers must be immediately isolated from healthy ones.
In the process of drying the bulbs, ventilation plays a very important role, the room in which the flowers are located must be aired.
The storage temperature of dug plants is also important: they begin to dry the bulbs at about 25
0 C, after a month they lower them to 20
0 C, in September the temperature should not exceed 17
0 C.
And what to do when it is impossible to dig out tulip bulbs in the summer? In this case, you should leave the tulips to winter in the soil, you should not dig them out in the fall.
It is not recommended to treat the plants with chemicals, it is better to process the bulbs with potassium permanganate immediately before planting, this will be quite enough.
Thus, following the advice of gardeners about when to dig tulip bulbs, how to store them, the better to process, you can achieve good success in breeding even very decorative varieties of these spring flowers.