If you sliced a bulb, the remaining part could have been viable. AFAIK, there's no way to know if you're getting real (heirloom I guess) tulips that bloom reliably every year, or some type of less reliable hybrid. You just have to wait and see what they do the next year if that's what you want to do. It may just be that the info you were given is because winter locally doesn't provide the chill hours necessary for bud/bloom formation. I'm told and have read that that is the case here, I've never seen any in yards or in stores (except the potted, already growing bulbs) but I don't know where the cutoff point is usually made. I've never been interested enough to investigate if this means that the foliage comes back but no flowers ever form, or if they just die. In central OH, "real" tulips are definitely reliable re-bloomers, long-lived bulbs - but that's a zone colder, I was in 5b very close to the Z6 line.

I think I said this before on this forum or maybe it was another one, but I know Al casually and through these forums and e-mails. I have visited his garden and seen his containers and bonzai. A friend took me on a drive past his garden several years ago. he was outside working and I met him briefly then. His garden is perfect and one of the best I have seen and I have never seen such a variety of healthy plants and trees growing in containers. Then,I heard him speak to our group about soul and growing things in containers. We were sure he was a professor because of all he knew about plants and how easy he explained it so we could easily understand. I just want to add my 2 cents that I have seen that he doesn't just talk the talk.

Indeed, Dori. Whenever we have trouble with a container soil, in a huge % of the instances it comes as a result of collapsing soil. Organic components break down into soup eventually. Leaf mold, peat, compost all break down quickly, rob aeration and increase water retention beyond healthy levels as they do. WE cannot depend on the organic components of container soils to deliver a well-rounded nutrient supply, so that responsibility rests squarely on our shoulders. Why then would we use these ingredients in any appreciable volume? Conifer bark breaks down at 1/4 the rate of peat and I bet at at least 1/6 the rate of leaf mold. Using conifer bark with a substantial mineral component (perlite, Turface, soil conditioner by Schultz, haydite, pumice) will yield a much more productive soil than the peat based soils and will be soo much easier to grow in. It eliminates soo much grower error as well. Plants with happy roots have a fractional amount of insect and disease problems as well. A huge % of the seemingly tertiary problems related when posters ask for help on this forum can be traced to reduced vitality as a result of poor soil. In the case of the quote "It works for me", I say that's very fine. If (the collective) you have no wish to change anything, then don't. Some growers might be so skilled they can grow in concrete, but for those who haven't really worked out a soil solution that's satisfactory yet, I suggest that you stay away from the small particled stuff (sand, compost, leaf mold, topsoil, garden soil, large volumes of peat ... and consider looking into a well-aerated mix with parts that insure longevity. The organic component of a houseplant soil is extremely unimportant, except for the requirement that it should not break down quickly. Folks, you can grow perfectly healthy and vital plants in an ALL MINERAL - NO ORGANIC COMPONENT (this means NO peat at all) soil if the particle size is appropriate. The structure of the soil and its ability to hold water is nearly all, and what materials the soil is made from is is nearly nothing, as long as they are not poison to plants. If you doubt what I'm saying - I'll prove it by growing a perfectly happy plant in nothing but 100% broken glass. ;o) Al

My Single Late tulips came back well for the first two years. After that, the plants still grew very well, but they didn't all bloom, because they split/multiplied into too many smaller bulbs, too small to bloom. AND they got botrytis bad enough to ruin the flowers for cutting. I think that if I'd fertilized them more regularly, and planted them farther apart, and the weather had been different (we have very cold, very wet weather right through June), they'd have kept blooming into at least the fourth year (this year). Big Smile (a HUGE yellow), a white, and Menton (apricot pink) were indeed planning to bloom this year, or at least I assume so from the size of the bulbs I dug up to replace with strawberry plants. I also had several Lily-Flowereds; none of them repeated as well as the Single Lates. Lots of people around here have perennial tulips that keep blooming, quite a few different kinds. My Angeliques, Apricot Beauty, and some pink fringed types kept blooming for three years, and who knows how long they'd have kept blooming, but the voles got them. In zone 5, I think you have the right amount of winter chill, so I think as long as you plant them far enough apart, consistently feed them, don't cut the leaves, and don't remove foliage until thoroughly dead, a lot of them will come back for at least a few years. Jeanne