Why do tulips keep growing

Have you currently got some tulips in a vase? When it comes to cut flower tulips, it's easier than you think to keep yours looking lovely and perked up. Cut flower tulips typically last between five to 12 days, but they're heavy drinkers, so it's important to top the vase up with water regularly.

Trim your tulips: Trimming tulips by cm allows water inside to hydrate them. Always cut at an angle to give as much surface area to drink from. Pop them in water as soon as you can to help them rehydrate and bloom. Help yours perk up by trimming them, popping them in water and then leaving them overnight.

Data Scientist Dave carried out a tulip experiment to prove it. He measured some tulips on the day they arrived and they were 31cm on average. Then he popped them in fresh water with flower food and waited a few days. On day five, he took them out of the water and measured them all, one by one. On average they'd grown by a huge 17cm!

Tulips are really responsive to sunlight and that's why they move. They're turning themselves towards the light sources around them, hoping to be seen by pollinators. You might also spot them opening up on sunny days and closing up at night time.

If you want your tulips to stand up straight for a dinner party or special occasion, we recommend taking them out of their vase, tightly wrapping them with newspaper into a cone shape, popping them back in water, and keeping them in a dark room overnight.

Even very limp flowers will revive. Remember me Log in. Lost your password? Snip end of stems. Fresh Cold Water. Place in Vase. Repeat every few days. Search for:. Tulips don't need fertilizer when they're planted, van den Berg-Ohms said. They already have what they need stored in the bulb. After the first year, though, fertilizing can improve their vigor, she said.

She recommends sprinkling an organic fertilizer three times a year: in fall, in early spring when the sprouts first appear, and later in spring when the flowers start dying back. Choose a fertilizer that's higher in phosphorus than nitrogen or potassium, she said. Make sure the bulbs don't get too much moisture in summer, when they're dormant. Schipper said excess moisture is often the problem when water-loving annual flowers are planted in the same space after tulips finish blooming.

As gardeners water the annuals through the summer, they drench the tulip bulbs and can cause them to rot. Van den Berg-Ohms also recommended against cutting the larger types of tulips to bring into the house. Removing their stems depletes their energy-storing ability, she said. Instead, wait until the flowers finish blooming and start dying back, and then cut off the flower heads about 1 inch below their base so the plant doesn't put its energy into seed production.

The smaller species tulips don't need deadheading. In fact, Heath said leaving the flower heads in place allows the seeds to drop and possibly produce more plants. You don't want to do that with the larger tulips, because it takes years for a seed to produce a flower. Better to preserve the energy of the existing plant than try to grow new ones. Let the foliage die back before removing it, which can take as much as eight weeks.

It's not all that attractive at that stage, but don't braid it to make it look neater, the experts said. You want to leave as much of the foliage exposed to the sun as possible, so the plants can use photosynthesis to recharge the bulbs. Trouble with deer and voles? Heath recommends Plantskydd, a repellent made from dried blood.

A hot spell in spring can cut short the growing season by causing the flower bud to open before the plant reaches full height, Schipper and van den Berg-Ohms said. That reduces the plant mass left to produce next year's food through photosynthesis. And some sites just have more favorable conditions than others. Tulips might return year after year in one part of your yard but not another, Schipper said. He's always getting calls from people who want to plant the kind of tulips that bloomed every year in their grandmothers' yards, but it's probably the microclimate that was responsible, not the type of tulip.

With the larger tulips, the first year's bloom will be the best, he said. Subsequent years will never be as striking, but "it's still respectable," he said. Skip to content. But there are exceptions.