Contents of the article:
It’s hard to imagine a spring site without a bright spring flowering of spring bulbous. How to save your favorite tulips in the summer when planting bulbs in the fall? Spring days are transient. With the advent of steady heat, plants that have recently been recently delighted with bright flowers will fade. Their aboveground part dies completely, and the bulbs patiently wait for the summer heat and winter cold to pass. Only the spring sun awakens the tulips again.
In nature, the bulbs remain year round in the soil. Tulips in flower beds are regularly dug to sort, preserve and transplant. When to plant tulips: fall or spring? And how to do it right?
When planting tulips in the fall
After planting, tulip bulbs should acclimatize and take root. It takes from 21 to 28 days. Spring planting of flowers in the middle lane can significantly delay the appearance of buds. In the autumn, if the tulips are planted on time, the plants have enough time to settle down in a new place and leave for the winter.
In order for the flowerbeds to be pleased with an abundance of flowers in May, it is important to choose the right time for planting tulips in the ground:
- Early planting threatens to form foliage in the fall and freeze when it gets cold and snow falls.
- If you miss the right moment, the bulbs will have a bad winter time, spring will be met with weakened ones and they will not lay buds.
It is considered that the best time for a transplant is the first half of autumn. But such a formulation is extremely inaccurate due to different climatic and weather conditions in various regions.
It is much easier to focus on soil temperature. If the soil in the flower bed is cooled to 7–8 ºC, the growing season stops, and the bulbs cannot root. For example, in the Moscow region and in all of the middle lane, tulips are planted when air temperature in the Moscow region is higher than +3 ºC.According to long-term observations, such conditions persist until the last week of September or until mid-October. However, it is not necessary to delay because of the risk of frost and early snow.
In the Urals, the dates are shifted by 10–20 days. The north, the earlier the bulbs should fall into the ground. In Siberia, planting tulips in the autumn is postponed to August and the first week of September. In a number of areas, bulbs are not planted during the winter because of severe frosts, which cause irreparable damage to plantings.
How to plant tulips in the fall
Tulips, like most spring bulbous crops:
- sun-loving;
- do not like stagnant water and cold wind;
- prefer a light, loose soil with a weak alkaline reaction.
Before planting tulips in the fall, they prepare a suitable plot for them. Sand is added to dense heavy ground. Sour lime soil or mixed with dolomite flour. Flower beds for onion shovels on a full bayonet, for each meter of area making:
- 10–15 kg of well-rotten humus or bottom peat;
- 100–160 grams of sifted ash.
These fertilizers can be replaced with an equivalent amount of complex mineral mixtures, in addition to supplements with chlorine incorporation.
When tulips are planted in the fall, fresh manure, droppings or rotted compost cannot be used. Such organics can cause bulbs to rot, pest infestation and fungal infections.
The embedding depth of the bulb is three times its diameter. On dense soil it is better to plant flowers a couple of centimeters higher. On sandy soils, wells make a little deeper. Only healthy planting material should get into the ground, so the bulbs are pre-inspected, sorted and treated with a solution of potassium permanganate. 
In the autumn, when the tulips are transplanted or planted in a new place, it is useful to make a sand pillow at the bottom of the furrow or hole, and dip the bulbs themselves into wood ash. It will protect against pests and rot, as well as effective fertilizer.
Tulips are planted in groups or rows with an interval of 8 to 10 cm, taking into account the emergence of new bulbs and adequate nutrition of adult plants. Then the wells are covered with soil, compacted and abundantly watered.
In the future, before the onset of winter, the onion culture does not need constant attention. If it is autumn, when the tulip bulbs are planted dry, the ridges are re-watered. With the onset of stable cold, the area is thickly mulchedIn winter, when there is a risk of freezing, the flower bed is additionally covered with snow.
How to store tulips before planting in the fall
The beauty of flowering and the long life of the bulbs largely depend on how the tulips are stored before planting in the fall.
In order for the bulbs to remain juicy, dense and healthy, their digging fields are dried and cleaned of soil, foliage and roots. Then sorted, laid out on clean, ventilated boxes of wood or plastic, interspersed with sawdust or shifted by wrapping paper. The optimum temperature for storing tulips is 22-25 ºC.Closer to the landing, the air should be cooler at 5-7 ºC.
