Digging tulips: timing and care
Content:
In this article, you will learn about digging tulips: What types of tulips should you dig? When should tulips be dug up after they bloom? Stages of digging tulip bulbs? How are plants planted in the ground?
Introduction
Tulips are one of the few flowers that delight us in the spring after the snow cover melts. Flowers do not require special care and therefore any novice florist can handle them. In order for the flower to fully develop, its tuber must be removed from the soil and dried, and after autumn planting in the ground. In this article, you will learn in detail when to dig up tulips at the end of their flowering and what to do next with them.
And this is due to the original natural requirements for the germination of wild tulips. Blossoming of flowers occurs after the snow melts, while there is an abundant amount of moisture in their soil, but after they have a long-term lack of water, such tulips grow in semi-deserts and dry steppes. During the warm and dry soil, the flower bulbs gain mass and the arrows are laid.
Due to the humid and cold summer in Russia, the bulbs can be subject to anger, various diseases and the threat of pests. In order for a flower to bloom and develop well, it needs to be in conditions more similar to natural ones.
Digging tulips: what varieties and how to dig
Older tulip bulbs do not need to be dug up every year. For 4-5 years, they can not be dug up. The bulbs are dug up solely for the sake of transplantation or further reproduction.
Tulips such as Dutch, velvet and green-flowered tulips need digging every year. If this rule is not followed, the plant can lose its decorative qualities and become weaker and more painful.
Digging tulips: when to dig up?
In Russia, the period for digging tulips begins in mid-June and ends in early August, but due to changes in the weather, the dates may also change.
A couple more points that demonstrate a favorable time for digging out tulips:
- The leaves of the plant had not yet dried up, but turned yellow and fell closer to the ground.
- If you begin to bend the stem of a tulip, then it will bend, not break.
The earliest types of tulips are dug up first, later the middle ones and the last ones are dug up the late tulips.
Influence of the region
When exactly, depending on the region of the country, you need to dig up tulips, is given below:
- Since the flowering of plants on the territory of Ukraine and southern Russia begins already in the month of April, they begin to be dug up there in May.
- You need to start work from 15 to 30 June in the Moscow region and nearby cities.
- In the Urals and the northeastern part, tulip bulbs are dug up in July.
- The latest digging of flowers, namely at the beginning of August, takes place in Siberia.
Digging Tulips: Lunar Calendar
For flower growers who follow the recommendations of the Lunar calendar, it is worth digging tulip bulbs on certain dates:
- May 25-28
- 7; 8; 11; 12; 14; 15; June 21-25
- 3; 4; 8-12; 17-22; July 31
- 1-9; 13-18 August
Stages of digging tulip bulbs?
The most favorable day for digging out a tulip will be a sunny and warm day. Make sure the ground is dry.In order to pick up all the tulip children from the ground, the flower is picked up with a pitchfork and at the same time slightly, retreating from the plant stem.
Clue. In gardening stores you can buy baskets that are designed for plants with bulbs. Any bulbous flower is planted in this basket and buried in the soil. Subsequently, the baby that will be formed there will be easier to collect.
After digging up the tulips themselves, you need to continue to follow the following plan:
- When shaking off the soil from tubers and roots, the leaves and stem must be cut off.
- Now, you need to leave the onion and the baby to dry out in the garden bed or put them in a dry and ventilated place.
When packaged by size, the bulbs are separated from the roots. At the same time, diseased shoots with cuts, mold and spots are immediately selected. If the onion is healthy, but damaged by a spatula or pitchfork, then the cut can be densely covered with wood ash or smeared with iodine, greenery.
To disinfect flower shoots from fungus, as well as other infections, the planting material is kept in a salt solution, namely, 1 liter of warm water and 1 tablespoon of salt.
To enhance the effect, you can also add a spoonful of baking soda or a good solution of potassium permanganate.
Planting material is stored in cardboard boxes for about 3-4 weeks, sprinkled with tubers in an ordinary layer. The temperature should be between 24 and 28 degrees Celsius, and the humidity should be about 70 percent, the presence of light is not necessary.
The main thing is not to forget to sign the boxes with tulip varieties so that there is no confusion.
The most common mistake of beginner growers is that they dig up tulips early. A beginner starts early digging tulips with yellowed leaves, so as not to break all the beauty of the flower bed. This is a big mistake.
It is important to sort out in advance the ways in which it will be possible to hide the withered foliage. Therefore, summer flowers are planted among the early flowers, or flower bulbs are planted among perennial flowers so that they hide the wilted flowers.
You can not cut the leaves of the tulip, after the end of flowering. Cuts in the cut of the leaves can cause infection. But the plant will benefit from removing buds that have already wilted so that the flower does not waste energy on the development of seeds.
It is very important to fertilize the flowers with phosphate-potassium fertilizer after they have faded so that the bulbs can form better. The solution concentrate is made twice weaker than usual. As a method, the flower is returned to the soil and waited for the flower to wilt naturally, after which the dug out bulbs are left to dry as usual. You can also put onions of flowers that have already bloomed for storage. According to gardeners, the color survives well in both of the proposed options.
Is it necessary to dig up tulips for the winter?
Inexperienced gardeners are often afraid for the safety of expensive and special types of tulips in the cold and terrible winter, worried about the fact that the flowers do not freeze, they want to know when it is tedious to dig out flowers for the winter.
In winter, tulip bulbs are not dug up, because in winter they are very difficult to preserve at home. Flowers can be protected from frost by covering them with a special cloth or peat. You can not warm the flower garden with raw materials and straw, because this can lead to rodents who like to gnaw on bulbs.
Experienced gardeners keep rare flowers with bulbs in pots. In the fall, the tubers are planted in a pot with loose and nutritious soil. The pot with the plant is removed to storage and taken out in the spring. So you can prepare the flower for flowering at home. Water abundantly a few weeks before the required one. If the plant is well taken care of, then it will bloom the same way as on the street.
Do you have to pluck tulips to get good bulbs?
In the abandoned gardens, you can see large fields of tulips, or rather their leaves. Without good care and frequent drying, the flower bulbs become smaller over time and the babies grow larger.The tulip spends all its energy on the development of the bulbs, so there is no energy left for flowering.
The flower will not be allowed to bloom if the gardener wants to get good planting material. When the bud begins to bloom, it is immediately removed. The energy of the tulip, which could have been expended to make the flower bloom, will now be used to form a strong bulb.
Older tulip varieties have the ability to retain their beauty if they are not dug out for several years. And new varieties of tulips with a fascinating color and shape will not bloom without drying.
Digging tulips: how are they planted in the ground?
From the above, we learned in what period of time it is necessary to dig up tulips that have already faded, their storage methods. Now, we will learn how to plant tulips. Is it always best to plant flowers in the spring or fall?
The advantages of autumn planting are that at its moment natural processes take place that have a good effect on the plant.
With a spring planting, the tulip will bloom only next year. In addition, there may be problems with the storage of planting material in the winter.
They begin to plant flowers from mid-September to the end of October. The landing period may vary depending on the weather in a particular area. It is not scary if the soil is slightly frozen, the main thing is that the temperature in the depths of the placement of the bulbs is not lower than 12 degrees.
The base of the flower is disinfected in a solution before planting. After, dry scales from the bulbs are peeled off.
The tuber is planted in the soil with a depth of 7-14 centimeters, depending on the size of the bulb and the constituents of the soil. Tulip babies are planted slightly deep. The gap between flowers is about 21-36 centimeters (the size of the flower plays an important role).
A mixture of sand, ground eggshell and ash is poured into the bottom of the hole prepared for the flower. In the event of the appearance of shrew mice, flower growers are warned and put exterminating granules into the soil so that rodents do not eat the onions in winter.
At the time of winter, the flower bed is covered with agrotechnical fabric so that the plants do not freeze, but immediately after the snow melts, it must be removed.