Planting And Growing Tulips For Beautiful Spring Color

Growing Tulips is an easy thing to do. Learn about when and how to plant tulips.
Here are our best tulip care tips for great spring color in your garden. All you need to know about these spring flowering bulbs from storing tulip bulbs to the nicest varieties.

Tulips are surprisingly easy to grow once you understand the best conditions for planting and care. Tulips, often mistaken as Dutch, have origins traced to Southern Europe and Asia. These resilient perennial flowers come in a myriad of varieties. The ideal condition are cold winters and hot, dry summers.

When To Plant Tulip Bulbs

The best time of year for planting them is the fall, around October or November, before the ground is expected to freeze. If you plant the bulbs too early, they will grow too fast and most likely die before winter's end.

Photo: Ataradrac

A Rembrandt Tulip

Soil Preparation For Growing Tulips

Once you decide where to plant your tulip bulbs, you need to prepare the soil. Your garden must provide adequate drainage and contain dry, airy soil. Sandy soil is perfect for any flowering bulb; adding coarse sand or compost will allow for more oxygen or airy soil. Without proper water drainage, wet soil can drown the bulbs and cause fungal diseases and possible rotting of the bulbs.

If your soil is not suitable, try growing them in containers!

Fringed or Parrot Tulip

Photo: dawnzy58

Flowering Time

Tulips begin to bloom in mid-spring and last until summer. You can cut the fresh flowers or leave them in your garden.

Read on here for more Tulip Care Tips

Varieties and Types of Tulips

Pink And White Rembrandt Tulip

The genus Tulipa contains over 100 different species, with more than 4,000 varieties of plants, in countless colors, heights, shapes, sizes and even fragrances. These are split up into 3 divisions: early, mid-season or late flowering. You can find a great selection here.

Early flowering Tulips bloom in March and include single early, double early, Greigil, Kaufmanniana and Fosteriana.

Common mid-season varieties, which bloom from late April to early-May, are Darwin hybrids, triumph and parrot.

Six primary classifications of late flowering Tulips, or those that bloom after May, are single late, double late, viridiflora, lily-flowered, fringed and Rembrandt. In addition, wild varieties can be found in each division.

Photo: Suzba

More Tulip Pictures...

Fringed Tulipa "Cummins"

Photo: alwyn_ladell

White Tulips

Photo: mclcbooks

Simply beautiful!

Photo: tanakawho

Stunning color!

Photo: Stacy Lynn Baum

Tulip Blue Diamond

Photo: yuki_alm_misa

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