Mother, I'm a bit confused, you dated your message and stated that your tulips are coming like crazy. From that I assume they are showing themselves at the surface...not that they are actually blooming. If the 3 means anything, I also assume you are in a zone 3 area---and I cant envision ANYTHING up yet...I'm in zone 5 and my tulips are just letting us know where they are---and have been for more than a dozen years. I don't think zone 3 is any different than my zone and you need not dig them up for storing or taking them indoors or thinking they need to be re-planted at a later date---they are quite happy to be left where they are, let them go brown sending their startches back down into the bulb and they will come back up next year. A mulch can be important if they ARE up somewhat and you fear a late frost will do them harm. The mulch, about 2", will help the soil retain its temperature and protect the bulb from a severe frost. Anything that does come up, and is hit by a frost, might harm what's up---but the bulb will know not to go any further until temperatures change for the better. And...in the fall, they do not need any protection--once the foliage has withered completely, it can be removed and the bulb is safely ensconced in its warm, cuddly soil until next spring.

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.

If you can lift the entire clump w/o doing much damage to the roots, you may not even need to transplant the foliage. Whenever I have to lift a plant and remove all the dirt from it - YES - trim the foliage, but if you can lift a clump and plop it right down into another freshly dug hole, you shouldn't need to cut back.

Why is thought that the common cultivated ornamental Tulips tend to die off? These unnatural Tulips are much larger than "wild" types. Do the larger bulbs rot easier? Do they have trouble storing enough energy to keep blooming, so they fail? The bulb growers know how to reproduce these bulbs, but it is good for their business model :)