Next step is to take the pot you've chosen (about 5" wide, fairly deep - say 8", and and it needs to have good drain holes), plus your growing medium - either a soil-based, or soil-less. Not bulb fibre, unless you don't want to keep the bulbs for next year. Plant them so the bulb is just covered with the mix, and water once. Let it drain. Put the pot into a cool and shady place (50F and under. Above freezing.) Leave it there for two weeks or so until the bud is through the neck of the bulb. Some Triumphs were bred using Early tulips - and some can be seriously 'early' - so keep an eye on the pot. When the bud is through, bring the pot into full light. You can water again - enough to keep the mix damp (not 'wet'). Don't let it sit for ages in a saucer of water. Warmth-wise - stay under 65F. The flowers will last longer. Don't spray the plants or 'mist' them indoors. You could encourage mould. Also keep an eye out for aphids. (Don't know where they arrive from, but they do, and they help any viruses shift from plant to plant. Rubber gloves and squish! is the most environmentally safe method of control available.) When they finish flowering, and your outdoor temps are more friendly, you could put the pot out into a sunny, sheltered spot to finish out the season. Take off the flower stalk and leave the leaves. You can feed them each week with normal strength houseplant food. Just - don't feed them while they're in flower, though in-bud is okay.

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.

Hi Jenny ... I don't know about the Jack in the pulpit roots, but last year I forgot about (well sorta forgot, sorta ignored) tulip bulbs,in mesh bags, in my garage till mid January. So I put them in pots in my kitchen window and they bloomed beautifully! You really don't have too much to loose, you can even recycle the planting mix if they don't go for you... Helen Here is a link that might be useful: Winter joy

You did right by giving them fresh soil. Most forced bulbs planted in the garden will adapt to the seasons and bloom again when they have stored enough nutrients. Provided they are hardy in your zone 5. Tulips are another story. Many do not naturalize. They may put up a few undersized blooms, or just foliage, the 2nd year and then gradually disappear. For that reason many gardeners buy new tulip bulbs every year. But there are a few that will naturalize and bloom each year. Recently someone posted that 'Toronto' has been blooming every year for her and the clump increasing in size. The old Darwins are also considered naturalizers. If your tulips had a cultivar name you could look it up to see to what division they belong. If not it's anybodies guess. Halfway down the page the divisions are listed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip