I've successfully brought tulips into bloom at approximate latitude 31.0. Figure on a week in the fridge for every inch of stem length desired. Ten weeks will take you into March. I think at this late date, if you have room in a refrigerator, I would pot them, put the whole thing in a plastic bag and put them in to chill. If you use moisture control potting soil, you should not need to add additional water if the soil is slightly moist. There must not be apples in the refrigerator you use for chill. After about 10 weeks of chill, bring them out into a warm place and water. Shoots should appear in about two weeks. You could bring them out and sink the pots into the ground and let nature take its course, but since they're potted, you may as well enjoy them inside. These came out of the fridge around December 17 after 11 weeks of chill. Every spring I swear not to plant tulips again. Every fall, maybe just a handful of purple or some orange. Nell Here is a link that might be useful: I Can, Too, Grow Tulips!

Just go to Canadian Tire or any other store that sells seeds and pick up a pack of seeds - they should have several sorts to chose from. You can get big huge and tall, fancy red colours, cute and tiny, and all kinds of sorts in between. Sunflowers are really easy to grow - they're a good kid plant. The easiest thing to do, without getting into any kind of fancy special light set-up, is to take a yogurt container or styrofoam cup (or anything like that) and some seed starting soil mix that you can also get at Canadian Tire ($5 will buy you a bag with more than you'll need). Make sure you've poked a hole or two in the container! Around the second week of May, fill your container(s) with the soil mix, water it well, and poke a seed into the soil, about 1/2 inch deep. Don't let the container dry out, but don't keep it soaking wet either. In a week or two at most, you should see something poking above the soil. Sometimes the seed husk gets stuck over the first leaves - that's not really a problem, and you can leave it alone. The plant will sort itself out, and you may break it if you fiddle with it. You can do this inside or outside (outside is a bit better, but beware of birds or squirrels stealing your seeds!). If you do it outside, pay attention to the nighttime temperatures - if it is going to go near or below freezing, take those seedlings inside! The soil will dry out faster if you do it outside, but the seedling will get better light. If you do it inside, put the seedling in the sunniest window you have, until the temperatures are consistantly above freezing. Then place the seedling outside in a shady spot, out of the wind. Over the next week you can slowly move it into a sunny spot. Towards the end of May, when the danger of frost is past, you can transplant your seedlings into the garden. Sunflowers are pretty tolerant of poor soil, but they won't tolerate a constantly wet or boggy spot. Fertilize with flower fertilizer - something that has a high phosphorus number (the middle number - the P in NPK) every other week and make sure you tie the stem to something (fence or stake)as it grows. The flower heads can get heavy! You can let the flower dry on the stalk, and watch as the birds have a feast in the late summer and fall. BP

Its hard to store them properly for the amount of time it would take to get you to the right month for planting. They usually end up drying out and rotting. They need a certain amount of cold to signal the plant to make a flower bud and bloom. For most tulips you have to plant them around Thanksgiving weekend to get enough cold to make flowers the following spring. But nowadays there are plenty of new colors that don't seem to be that rigid about cold. If it is really important to you to get this group of bulbs to bloom you can either pot them up and shove them in your refrigerator for a month or pot them up and let them grow. If some of them bloom then great, if not then let them live as long as you can keep them happy and then let them dry up and appear to die. Take the dead looking plants in their pots to the garage or somewhere out of the sun where they can stay dry. The bulbs should last until fall when you can then plant them in the ground. If they only send up leaves you can usually keep them alive until the end of June or early July. You want to keep the leaves up and happy as long as possible. Or you can just plant them in the ground and see what happens - you might get a few flowers. You never know what treatment they received before you bought them, they have enough chill hours already.

I planted some wildflower tulips indoors, the quality of the bulb makes the difference. Apparently mine like low light, after trying to get a good light schedule down, I just left them alone. I found they really gotta be deprived, a little overwatered, dried out well, lots of light to barely any and growth gets pretty encouraging with erratic temp fluctuation. the ones I forced trying to figure out anyway. So I have some more with some daffodils I am keeping colder to get to root well, in another pot, waiting to see the difference. the hormones in the bulbs seems a bit too high, but i don't know. these might die, but, maybe not. my conclusion is, too much light they get leggy, yellowish and life cycle too fast. maybe not enough cold. so as far as too late, i have no idea and assume the cold helps regulate bulb hormones for even growth.