Hopefully, your tulips and other spring-flowering bulbs have bloomed and welcomed spring. Hopefully, too, they haven’t faded already. Here’s some advice for senior gardeners for when those beautiful blooms turn yellow or brown.

When your tulips are finished blooming, the natural instinct is to ground level prune them – i.e. cut off the faded flowers and leaves. However, that’s not a good idea. The green leaves need to continue making food to store in the bulbs to sustain the plants until they’re ready to bloom again next spring. They also need lots of that stored energy to bloom again next spring.

Don’t get lulled into the false premise that fertilizing will give them the food they need. It’s a good idea to fertilize bulb plants even though they didn’t need any fertilizer when planted new. They’d appreciate some after expending all that energy to give  you their spectacular spring show of color. But remember, fertilizer’s job is to replace essential nutrients missing from the soil. These nutrients play a role in keeping plants healthy much like vitamin supplements help to keep us healthy. The real food making takes place in the reaction between the sun and the chlorophyll in the leaves. That’s why it’s so important to keep the leaves on the plant for as long as they’re green.

It’s OK to remove spent flowers when they fade. If possible, it would be a good idea to take photos of your bulb garden(s) while you can still distinguish the colors and identify spaces where no plant came up this year. That’ll help you select the right color plant to fill in the bare spots this fall.

If you’re still able to kneel or comfortably sit and garden, remove the spent flowers after you’ve taken your pictures. Using pruners, reach into the foliage as deeply as you can and cut off only the flower stem. Keep in mind that all flowers don’t call it a season at once so you can either cut them as they die or wait until they all die and then cut them all at once. If you follow the adaptive garden’s pacing yourself technique, it’s probably better if you cut several at a time, while adhering to your work/rest break routine.

There’s no rule that you have to remove spent flowers right away. If it’s more comfortable to garden standing, you can wait until the leaves die and then use your string trimmer to remove both the leaves and the flowers. String trimmers don’t leave as clean a cut as other tools. If that’s a concern to you, you can sit down and use hedge trimmers to make a cleaner cut.

While you’re out in the tulip bed(s) taking pictures of bare spots that need new bulbs this fall, it’ll behoove you to find out why you have bare spots. If a bare spot looks disturbed, dig down to see if you can find a bulb. It’s unlikely that you will because it was probably dinner for a critter. Dig into undisturbed bare spots until you find the bulb. When you do, check to be sure it was planted root end down. The pointed end should face up. Also, squeeze the bulb If it’s squishy, it has probably drowned. Bulbs don’t like wet feet. Don’t plant the replacement bulb as deep.

Beds of mass plantings of tulips and other bulbs may be mesmerizing but don’t forget your adaptive gardening practices when tending them. Garden for enjoyment but do it safely.

For more information on safely tending bulbs, read my critically acclaimed book, The Geriatric Gardener: Adaptive Gardening Advice For Seniors. You can order a copy at https://thepancoastconcern.com/the_geriatric_gardener

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