I bought Lowe sut of there spring bulbs about five hundred, they are all bloming now wish I new how to post a picture they are truly outstanding, Three types of new dafodils, thre types of hycinths, and several types of dutch iris Would like to set up a large trade for your irises,Ive got many many plants to trade right now I have ornamental grases five diferent types and water plants and canna lilies bought from lowes last year,lets trade Hightider

Just an update... I potted up the bulbs on March 19th. It was really too chilly before then to really try forcing them. I potted them up in the 8 and 10 inch pots with potting soil. I only filled the pots 3/4 of the way full. Packed in my bulbs pretty close- the 8 inch pots got 7 each, and the 10 inch got 12-15 each. I skipped any mesh- found out my ground critters weren't the tulip eating kind. I set them up at first at the south windows in the three seasons porch, then moved them under the central skylight a month later when most of them had a couple inches worth of green showing and displaying daily tilt. On the first weekend in May, the earliest of them was just starting to drop off bloom, the latest of them was just about to pop. All of them had lovely greenery and a bloom or two going on. The grape hyacinths I gave the same treatment for, I packed them into some recycled fresh mushroom bins. They were fully bloomed by a month later, and almost blown by the weekend. I planted in the bricks of hyacinths into their border at the end of april, with the daffs in their mixed bloom looked lovely. Planted in all the tulips along about 35 feet of fenceline in a shallow 2 foot border, they seem to be doing well there so far, nothing seems to be eating them yet. I don't think I lost any hyacinths in the transplanting so far, I didn't break them up, just planted them in as bricks. Most of the tulips fared well. Lost several Shirley and Orange Queen, they didn't like potting too much. I planted the not quite dead seeming bulbs in anyway, hoping for next year. I gently broke apart the pots into separate bulbs for the border, and several of them already had babies separating off of them shooting up their own greens. I wasn't sure if the insulated garage would have gotten cold enough or not, but apparently so- it also came on fairly quickly after my initial post a seriously deep cold and then real chilly snap, don't know if that helped or not.

I wish I had good news for you but I suspect the bulbs rotted. Probably if you pull on the leaf tips the whole thing will come up since the bulb usually rots first and there will be nothing holding the leaves anymore.... Did the growing bulbs freeze? Is it possible you overwatered and the soil did not drain well enough? Don't tell your girlfriend what happened to the rest, just let her keep thinking you're a bulb pro and they all grew fine!

The great majority of tulips, not just species or Darwins, but very many garden hybrids will return reliably with certain caveats. Most essentially, like bearded iris, these bulbs need to be dry over summer, with preferably NO mulch but bare soil - despite growing at depth, the bulbs need to be baked all summer. They also hate, hate, hate wet winter soil. Essentially, if you can grow them on a sunny scree bed with no competition and well drained soil_ fertility is less an issue if sufficient sunlight falls on the leaves - most tulips will return. They often don't return in pots because they split off into daughter bulbs too readily, and they don't return in the ground if they do not get a full sun and very well drained environment. Mine are in a stony soil and are dressed with gravel, maintaining a lot of summer radiation. Having said that, not all tulips are equal. The least reliable have been the very large flowered Triumph types (but not the Fosteriana) and some of the late singles seem to be less reliable than early singles. parrots, viridiflora are so-so while lily-flowered have been very reliable for me. Best of all, even in pots, are species such as batalinii, clusiana, humilis and, my top favourite although rare, the late sprengeri (easier to grow from seed than to source expensive bulbs). True, my garden is a zone 8 sandy and stony open allotment in the UK but many clumps are over 15 years old - the ones I have lost have tended to be either overshadowed or thugged out by weeds and grass.I have never fertilised them, although I do top-dress the veggie beds (I grow a lot of tulips on the ends) with a compost topping (but not very rich in nutrients) but again, I do ensure the leaves are allowed to fully die back before removing or allowing other perennials to overshadow them. Perhaps less surprising, most of the older cultivars, which were bred from 'cottage' tulips - tend to have shorter stems, smaller flowers - are more reliable than some of the very large and blowsy doubles or modern varieties. They never come back when underplanting shrubs, or (unlike narcissi) in grass.