growing tulips in a garden pinterest image

A Guide for the Home Gardener

sitting on ground near garden holding a bucket of fresh picked tulips

If you have read any of my other gardening posts, then you know that I am a backyard gardener trying to learn all of the methods of growing cut flowers. Maybe someday I will have a big piece of property to grow on a larger scale, but for now I grow in my suburban backyard on less than 1/3 of an acre. The past couple of years I have learned about growing dahlias and zinnias through learning online (most recently taking the Floret Online Workshop), reading books and through experience by trying it out myself! This year the new flower I challenged myself with was Tulips! Wow, what an awesome and beautiful learning experience!

As some people know, tulips are relatively easy to grow. You can plant a bulb and then it does most of the work and comes up at the first signs of spring and blooms. Then they go dormant and come up again next year. But, what I wanted to learn was how do people grow them for cut flowers to use in arrangements? Can it be done on a small scale in a garden? After I did my research and tried it out and the good news is it can be done in a backyard! I learned a lot from my experiences and below I'm going to share exactly how you can grow tulips in your garden for cut flowers, along with mistakes to avoid making. While I definitely killed a few flowers I also learned some hard lessons this year!

Growing Tulips in a Cut Flower Garden...

Buy Bulbs Early...

One of the first lessons I learned about buying tulip bulbs is that you need to be thinking ahead and order your bulbs early. When I say early I mean start looking and paying attention to suppliers in late Spring/early Summer. They will be on sale as soon as the growing season is over and if you want anything specific do not wait until the fall. I did not order my bulbs until the fall because I decided late that I was going to try and grow tulips for cut flowers. Since I was trying it out and not looking for anything more than the experience I was okay purchasing inexpensive bulbs and not being picky over varieties. But, I came to find that if you want the really good tulips to use for flower arranging they will be sold out by the fall, so be sure to plan ahead.

Plant Tulips in the Fall...

You will plant your tulip bulbs in the fall just like any other tulips. I planted my bulbs in my raised beds in my backyard garden. Tulips are perfect because they didn't need to be planted until after all of my vegetables were gone and they were all harvested before spring planting. Therefore, in your garden planning aim to plant them sometime in late October or Early November.

When planting the bulbs you make a trench and line the bulbs up like eggs in an egg carton. They can be planted closer together than a perennial garden because you will not be leaving the bulbs to grow again next year. As you can see in the pictures I had a small amount of bulbs and did not plant them intensely. But, next year I plan on planting a lot more. Also, be sure to add plant labels into your garden beds to mark which varieties are in which section. I just drew a diagram, but they grew closer together than I anticipated and I was unsure which was which.

Once you plant them cover them gently with soil and let them be in the garden. I did not water or fertilize them at all! In an outdoor garden nature will do the hard work and provide plenty of water for them to grow. If you live in a dry climate you may need to water them every once in a while. I would do a quick search online to find out how often for your growing zone.

Grow and Bloom in Spring...

The best part about tulips is that they are not a flower that needs a lot of care and attention. You plant them in the fall and let them go until the Spring. Once Spring time comes they will begin to emerge at the first signs of warmer weather and more sunshine. I live in Southwest Ohio (Growing Zone 6A) and my tulips began coming up in the middle of March. Even though they began coming up in the middle of March, they did not begin getting buds/blooms until April. I was not able to begin picking them until after April 5th.

The difficult part with growing them in the garden is I can't control when they come up and are ready for harvest. So much depends on the weather and sunshine. The warmer weather and lots of sunshine will encourage them to grow and bloom. I planted mine in hopes that they would be ready for Easter, but they were not ready in time. So, I learned to be flexible with the tulips and just enjoy them when they are ready for harvest.

You also need to be prepared for the threat of freeze or frost. Sometimes a small period of warm weather in early spring will trigger the tulips to grow. But if a frost or freeze happens a week or two later it could freeze the buds or blooms. Be prepared to cover them if you are expecting any cold weather.

Harvest at Right Stage...

Learning when to harvest was a huge learning curve for me! I learned that I was supposed to pick them when the bud started to get color, but was not open. This took me quite a few tries to get right! A couple of times I thought that I better wait a little bit longer until I pull up the plant. By later that day or the next morning the tulip was already open! Then I tried doing it earlier and it seemed like I picked them too early and they took a long time to open once I got them in water.

My best advice would be to watch carefully for the bud to start to get a little bit of color. As soon as it does pull it up. This may take some trial and error, but don't worry if you pull them a little early or late they will still be great cut flowers!

Pull Up Entire Plant with Bulb...

The way that the professional flower farmers grow cut flower tulips is by treating them like an annual plant (one that will only last one growing season). When the tulip is ready to be picked you hold the stem at the base near the soil and gently pull it up with the bulb attached. By pulling up the entire plant with the bulb attached a flower farmer can store the tulips in a cooler because the food source is still attached. Then they can use them anytime over the course of up to 2 weeks. Pulling up the entire plant also provides the longest stem length possible.

holding a tulip plant with bulb attached

I did pull up my tulips with the bulbs attached just as I had learned. My plan was to save the bulbs and replant them, but I learned that was not going to work out. It is actually really difficult to get quality tulips to grow again from the bulbs this way. The bulbs lose a lot of their energy when the flower is cut away during the blooming stage and they will only produce possibly some leaves or low quality flowers in the future. So, instead I just went ahead and composted the bulbs and will buy new ones again next year.

Storage Options...

I had a really hard lesson in storing harvested tulips during my first year of growing them. As I said before, professional flower farmers pull them up with the bulb attached. Then they store them in a cooler until ready for use. I pulled my first round of tulips up and figured I would store them in my basement where it was around 60-63 degrees. I thought it would be cool enough. But, when I cut them off of the bulb about a week later and put them in water the flowers all wilted and looked terrible (see picture above). My basement was just not cool enough and was not a good place to store them for that length of time.

Here is my advice for a home gardener... if you have a cooler or refrigerator (around 40-45 degrees) that you can store the tulips with bulbs attached they will probably last longer. If you do not have this option I would cut them off the bulbs within 1-2 days and get them into some water with flower food. Storing them in a cooler would probably only be worth it if you are trying to make them last for a certain occasion or something.

Arrange in a Vase...

Once you have your tulips harvested and prepped comes the really fun part- arranging them! Tulips are so easy to arrange!

Here are some quick tips for making an easy tulip arrangement:

Fill a vase with some water and add a packet of flower food. (Make sure you add the flower food- it will help your tulips last a lot longer!)
Clean any dirt/debris from the tulip stems.
Cut the ends of your tulips at a 45 degree angle so they can uptake as much water as possible.
Clean leaves off of the tulips that will touch the water (I recommend leaving the higher leaves on since they make it easy to arrange the flowers)
Place the tulips in the vase at slightly different lengths. Place taller/straighter stems in the center and stems that are a little more curved or shorter around the sides. Fill in gaps with other tulips.
After a day or so the tulips may be standing up a lot straighter than originally. You may need to adjust or arrange them again.

Enjoy Your Beautiful Tulips!

vase of red striped tulips in a vase with garden in background

It is so much fun to see something that you grew yourself in a vase decorating your home. In my experience it is worth the planning and work in the fall for some amazing blooms in the spring.

Make sure you read all about caring for cut flowers to get the longest vase life out of your flowers!

Happy Gardening!

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