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Too late to plant tulip bulbs?

9 years ago

I bought myself a boatload of tulip bulbs a couple months ago, and then got called out of town for work for a while. I just got back, and I'm wondering, will these tulips still do well if I'm just now planting them on December 30? I live squarely in zone 8a in eastern GA and there's no hard freeze forecast for the next 10 days. I'm planning on planting them in raised beds. Do you guys think they will still perform well enough to go to the trouble at this point?

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Comments (9)

dbarron
9 years ago
Nothing to loose..chances are they won't last long in a zone 8 garden no matter what anyway.
So...it matters little probably for only one year of bloom.
calistoga_al ca 15 usda 9
9 years ago
Your choices at this point is plant them, or throw them away. It is certainly worth it, to plant now. Al
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It is too late to expect blossoms now. They should be planted in autumn and then flowers follow the next spring. It is doubtful you would get flowers when the heat comes on; they don't like it. However, you can get your garden bed ready for them to go in in September or October, if you wish.
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Matthew, I am in zone 5 also, and "rescued" several bags of tulip bulbs that I had given to my daughter-in-law last fall -- which she never got around to planting. humph! But a couple of weeks ago, I planted them in potting soil as they had begun to sprout after sitting in cold garage for months, and they are growing!!! It remains to be seen if they will flower properly, but I have hopes that they will. It certainly wouldn't hurt if you did the same just to see what happens. Good luck!
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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.
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ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
9 years ago
make up a pot ... of moist media ... plant some bulbs ... leave them outside for a month or so.. full shade .. [is that long enough for a cold period????]

then bring them in.. and TEST THEM ...

why guess ...

but.. you dont mention your source.. and if they have already been cold stored .. or been sitting in bigboxstore.. since proper planting time ...

dont forget ... air temps.. have little to do.. with soil temps.. once planted ... especially in your zone ...

ken
pitimpinai
9 years ago
Plant them. Period. What's to lose?
ryank817
Original Author
9 years ago
I have to be picky about what I plant because I have precious little planting space in my cookie cutter neighborhood. If there's very little chance they'll do well, I would save that area to plant some early spring stuff in a month or two.

Ken - I'm new to tulips and found out about the cold storage thing just recently. I bought them at Lowe's & Costco about 2 months ago, they've been sitting in my garage since then which tops out at prob 50-55 in the day and bottoms out in the low 40's, sometimes into the 30's, at night, and are in the dark 90+% of the time.
katob Z6ish, NE Pa
9 years ago
Definitely plant them, they'll be fine. Do it soon though or in your zone there's more of a problem they won't get enough cold in order to bloom properly.
xiangirl zone 4/5 Nebraska
9 years ago
You can plant them in pots and put them outside. If they do well, transplant into the ground. If they don't...you haven't given up any yard space.
Pick big pots that won't freeze all the way through, but the tulips will 'feel the cool' so they spring up!
Heidi
bragu_DSM 5
9 years ago
Plant 'em.

Our local area tulip festival (Pella) has a special way to deal with them them for the late spring festival. You can google it.

plant em'

dave
mothorchid
9 years ago
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.

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