This article was written in October - Sarah Raven
Now is the moment for planting Tulips. They start putting roots down and the cold temperatures help to wipe out viral and fungal
diseases that lurk in the soil and which may infect the bulbs. Planting late is a traditional means of disease protection.
Tulips should go in deep, in trenches or holes dug to
20-30cms. Deeper planting means you won't need to stake and kept cool, deep down in the soil, means your tulips are more likely to flower year after year.
I use a bulb planter with a spade like handle to do my planting in borders, but in the cutting garden we dig out trenches and plant tulips in those.
If you garden on heavy soil, cover the base of wherever you're planting with 5cm of washed sharp sand, horticultural grit, or spent compost. Add a handful of bonemeal to encourage formation of next year's flowers and mix it into the soil and grit at the base of the hole. Place the tulip bulbs, pointy end up, about 8cm apart and cover with soil. Again, if you garden on heavy soil you can mix grit at approximately one-third volume with the infill soil.
If you're short of space, cover the first lot of bulbs with soil and then add a second layer before filling in the hole. There is still enough soil above the bulbs to allow you to over plant without damaging them. We do mixed colour combinations in the cutting garden just like this, with lots of crimson-black varieties (such as 'Black Hero', 'Havran', and 'Queen of Night') in the base layer, with some carmines and brighter reds (such as 'Tambour Maitre', 'Antraciet' and 'Jan Reus') on top for contrast.
On poor soil, it's worth giving almost all spring-flowering bulbs a potash feed in the early spring. This helps with root and bulb formation and will encourage them to stick around and flower on and on for years.
When you cut tulips, make sure you leave a short section of the leafy part of the stem below where you cut. This gives the bulb a chance to make enough food to survive through the dormant period and makes it more able to produce flowers the following year. It is also important to leave the browning foliage on your tulips until every leaf has died right down, usually by early summer.
I have found no benefits from digging up tulip bulbs after flowering each year, so I leave them in place. In mid-June I rake up all the dead foliage, mulch with 5-8cm of compost or well-rotted manure and over plant with half-hardy flowers or vegetables like courgettes or pumpkins.
I agree with her for the last paragraph .. I'm too lazy and they all come back.. I live in warm Essex...
