Tips for Tulips part 2

 
Snails and slugs. They seem pretty harmless, right? Not when it comes to tulips! They are so bad they will eat up your flowers so that all you have left is foliage, and we definitely don't want that to happen, since the flowers are the best part. So what can you do to fight off slugs and snails? Well, you don't want to use messy chemicals like liquid slug killer or other toxic products. All you need to do is get some beer at the store and make a beer trap. Fill up a shallow pan half way with beer, then dig a little hole and put the pan down near the tulips. Slugs and snails like the smell of malt and yeast contained in the beer and they will crawl into the trap and die.

If you notice any standing water near your tulips you should add either compost, sand, peat moss, or some combination of these three to your soil so the water will drain off more easily. Tulips don't grow well in flooded soil – they are susceptible to diseases and fungus in heavy water – so make sure you convert your soil into the well-draining type.

The bulbs of tulips are where all the plant food is stored for the next season. You want to make sure your bulbs are well-stocked with nutrients so you can get plenty of beautiful flowers in the future. The best way to do that is to wait until the flowering stage has passed and then add more fertilizer to the soil, making sure it is rich in nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, and other beneficial nutrients. (If you have to dig up and chill your bulbs in the refrigerator, remember to store them far away from apples and other types of fruit because they will make the bulbs rot.)

Do you live in a place where your bulbs stay in the ground all year round? Then you need some bone meal for your tulips. It is the ideal fertilizer since it has a lot of phosphorous, which is good for developing strong roots. Bone meal is also a slow-acting fertilizer that lasts quite awhile. Adding about one teaspoon to every tulip hole will be all you need.

'Deadheading' is also important when your tulip petals start to fall. To deadhead your plants, just leave the stems and leaves in place and remove the entire flower head. This allows the nutrients to not be wasted by going up into the dying flower parts, but instead traveling down into the bulb to be stored for the future.

So there you have plenty of tips to keep your tulips in wonderful shape throughout the spring and well into the summer.

source : hydroponicsearch