The flowering of tulips does not last very long, and after a few days the beautiful flowers begin to fade, and the flowerbed loses its aesthetics. Even if all the tulips have withered , they need appropriate care after flowering. Hot and arid weather speeds up this process. Watering, so necessary for tulips during flowering, should continue after the buds have fallen. The fact is that for two to three weeks, the formation of bulbs underground, and due to regular watering, they accumulate the necessary amount of nutrients. Many gardeners are wondering: "When to cut tulips after flowering?" Do not do this. The leaves should dry naturally, after which the bulb will be ready for digging.
Tulips have already faded, leaving after flowering comes down to several points:
1. Top dressing and heavy watering. As soon as
the tulip flower fades, the peduncle is carefully removed. Over the next two weeks, tulips are watered and must be fed, as this is the period when the bulbs accumulate nutrients. How to feed tulips after flowering? Fertilizers that contain nitrogen and chlorine are absolutely unsuitable. For better storage, tulip bulbs require phosphorus and potassium. Such fertilizer is applied under the tulip bushes at the rate of 30-40 grams per square meter. You can use rastrin, aquarin or crystallin.
2. Cutting leaves. So, tulips have wilted, care after flowering in the future is reduced to cutting leaves. You can completely remove them only after final yellowing. Premature leaf cutting causes the bulbs to lag behind in development. In order not to lose the place where tulips grew, experienced gardeners leave a plate indicating the variety of plants. Yellow leaves spoil the appearance of the front garden, but this can be fixed by pressing them to the ground with any object.
3. Digging bulbs of tulips. So, the tulips have faded, the care after flowering has been completed, it is time to start digging the bulbs.
This procedure is carried out in late June to the second decade of July. It is easy to determine the readiness of the bulbs - one of them is dug up and inspected. The ripened bulb has well-formed roots, brown spots appear on the scales, and the ends of the leaves and the stem of the tulip are easily wound on the finger.
When digging tulips, you must follow the basic rules:
- for excavation, you should choose a sunny day so that the bulbs dry well;
- when harvesting in wet weather, the bulbs must be washed with water and dried;
- the shovel should be deepened so as not to damage the roots;
- pickling the bulbs is carried out with a 5% solution of potassium permanganate;
- diseased, damaged and sprouted bulbs are subject to rejection;
- digging begins with the earliest varieties;
-To preserve the variety of tulips, the large size of the flowers, resistance to disease, bulbs should be dug up every year, some varieties are allowed to be dug out every two years.