If your tulips are diseased you need to find out why. There are tulip disease which will persist and planting more is just throwing good money after bad. The symptom of distorted petals is typically down to poor bulb treatment the previous summer, possibly poor conditions over the winter, and occasionally insect damage. Diseases, other than tulip breaking virus, tends to affect the leaves quite badly. Lifting tulip bulbs over the summer is indeed a good thing to do if your climate and suitable are not ideal. Tulip bulbs in heavy soils can receive too much water over the summer which will cause them to be weak the following year. Or they may split excessively and never become large enough to flower. Hot humid climates seem to cause the same problems. You might want to leave some in the ground and lift others, just to see how well they do in your garden. If you are going to dig them at all then dig them now, or as soon as the leaves go yellow, and store them cool and dry over the summer. Replant them in November, or maybe October, once the soil has cooled down but before it freezes solid. You can plant annuals in the same area but it isn't ideal for the tulips. Some people deliberately overplant to hide the dying foliage. This is bad because the foliage needs maximum sunlight to recharge for next year. Beds with annuals also tend to get watered quite a lot over the summer, again not good for the tulips. These are two of the reasons why tulips often repeat poorly. If you are going to leave the bulbs in the ground and overplant, think about doing it fairly late to give the leaves as much sun as possible, and think about using plants that don't need extra water and fertiliser, like Cosmos or Iceplants.

I'm a bit of a gambler with my bulbs. I had a nice tulip bed, but decided to do something else there. While they were blooming, I used plastic knives that I stuck in the soil with the color (I always forget names). Then I started working the new bed. I dug and dug and let it rest. Then a couple of weeks later, I dug some more. After a total of six weeks of mess, I recently replanted the bulbs. I used some bonemeal and worked in lots of organic matter. I covered and mulched. I could not imagine any difference between saving the bulbs for autumn and planting them in deep good soil. I have confidence that it will work. If it doesn't, then my friendly garden store will welcome my money next year. Jim

Tulips are different from daffodils. Unless the daffodils are smitten with hungry grubs or speared by the gardener, they'll sit and clump up and flower until they're overcrowded. Tulips grow to flowering size, do their thing, then produce daughter bulbs which then have to grow to flowering size. If you have a clump of species tulips you can see this going on season by season. If they aren't deep enough they produce 'dropper' roots and pull themselves further into the ground. It's a fascinating structure to see. If you want a guaranteed display of a particular tulip then your best bet is to buy fresh each year to be sure of uniform flowering and creating the picture you had in mind. If you have one of 'those' gardens (like mine!), where the leaves are as welcome as the flowers, then you can dig up and replant each year. Or you can leave them in place. Generally, in this zone and place, I do not fridge my bulbs. Not any of them. They resent it to death. In zones with baking summers I can see it could be necessary to persuade the bulbs that it's time to put out the starter roots before winter sets in. A little shiver down the spine, so to speak. For me, one tulip I can count on to return without being lifted is 'Spring Green'. And T violacaea. Most of the others are taken out, left so the leaves fall, then put into net bags and hung in a cool shaded place. They stay there until I replant in May and June (your November-December). However, there are always daughter bulbs that go unremarked until they show up the following spring. If you don't like that, and digging is not an option, then you can use a Roundup wiper wand on the leaf to remove the problem.

Thirty days or so after irises bloom they start to put out side increases which are the rhizomes that will mature and bloom for the following year. This years blooming rhizomes will not bloom again- just act as "mothers" that produce the babies and it's roots will feed and water the new little ones until they form roots of their own. Dig now and the iris might not have the energy to produce the increases needed for next year. But- they aren't as fussy as this rule of thumb sounds. I dug a bunch last year right after bloom and threw them in the woods where they are happily growing this year simply sitting on top of the soil. Go figure! I kill more plants with fussing and kindness than I do neglect.