Topic: Tulip advice needed

[Melbourne12]

I bought 60 tulip bulbs for the spring of 2007, and they flowered very well.  After they'd died back, we lifted the bulbs, which had multiplied to around 100, and stored them over last summer, and replanted them in the autumn.  They are now starting to bloom, and we've just had the first few bunches from them.

My question is this.  This year, although the flowers are lovely, the stems are much shorter than last year, which makes them not quite as useful for cut flowers.  Is there anything we can do to remedy this?  Should we have fed them something special? (We use mushroom compost and Growmore generally on the lottie). Should we have stored them in a particular way?

Any advice would be gratefully received!

[springbok]

awww I am glad you had a display though, mine are slug eaten before they flowered :(

[Palustris]

Dredging my memory of 40 years or so back, I am  sure I had some info on storing tulips for out of season flowering. One of the 'entries' was on stem length and cold temps. I think the height of the tulip (given equality of other factors) was governed by cold. So probably your tulips have not been cold enough over the winter! Certainly our winter did not have the prolonged cold spelss we would normally expect and our Queen of the Night are definitely going to be smalller this year.

[Melbourne12]

Dredging my memory of 40 years or so back, I am  sure I had some info on storing tulips for out of season flowering. One of the 'entries' was on stem length and cold temps. I think the height of the tulip (given equality of other factors) was governed by cold. So probably your tulips have not been cold enough over the winter! Certainly our winter did not have the prolonged cold spelss we would normally expect and our Queen of the Night are definitely going to be smalller this year.

That would explain it, thanks.  I assumed that they hadn't got some lurgy, since other than the modest height, they're fine.