Get Growing - Tulip envy, anyone?

A Gardening Blog

Wednesday, May 7th, 2008

Posted by Sue Kidd @ 04:16:27 pm

I am always talking with reporter Stacey Mulick, the star diva of our Crime & Breaking News Team, about various garden things. If her boss would let me, I'd poach her off the C&BN team and make her a full time SoundLifer and garden writer. As if that will ever happen, but a garden editor can dream, can't she?

This week, we've been talking repeatedly about our tulips. Until this week, mine were stilted and short (no sun!!) and hers have been MIA thanks to a few crazy critters in her yard.

So she poses the following as a question-slash-gripe for all of you, our faithful Get Growing readers:

I must admit I have tulip envy.

I drive around and see colorful clusters of red, yellow, pink and orange tulips. Then, I return to my house and see the scant few tulips that have survived in my yard. In previous years, I’ve planted dozens upon dozens of tulips in my flower beds.

Each spring, the numbers of tulips sprouting from the ground continue to be less and less. It’s hard not to get frustrated by the disappearing bulbs. I can now count on one hand the number of tulips blooming in my front AND back yard. (The only exception is the tulips in containers out back – they have come back.)

I’ve read that tulips are tasty snacks for many garden critters so I am thinking of giving up on tulips all together. My hyacinths continue to thrive and the rabbits didn’t munch the flowers off my spring crocuses this year. Victory!

Anyone else have tulip problems? I’d take suggestions about how to keep my tulips away from the critters.

-- Stacey Mulick

Categories: Dilemmas, Q & A • 1 comment

COMMENTS:

Comment by minnieb @ 21:14 - Wednesday, May 7th, 2008

I've heard that many fancy Tulips tend to decline over the years in the ground unlike Hyacinths, Daffodils, and Crocus. They will come up smaller each year and finally disappear altogether. It's better to replant fresh ones every year or two. My father commented this Spring that all the Tulips that came up in his garden are the plain yellow and red ones even though he remembers planting all different colors and varieties over the years.

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Get Growing

Craig Sailor is the Arts & Entertainment editor at The News Tribune. Last year he planted his first vegetable garden. Focusing on unusual varieties, “Freak of Nature” returns for 2008 with a new crop of uncommon vegetables and flowers. This year he’ll try yin yang beans, giant pumpkins, blue poppies and mutant sunflowers. He gardens at his North End Tacoma home and sneaks seeds in to his mother’s garden at Willapa Bay when she’s not looking. .

Sue Kidd is the Lifestyle Editor at The News Tribune. She is a devoted vegetable gardener, but otherwise a tragic mess at growing just about anything else. Her current obsessions are growing tomatoes on a trellis and trying to convince all her South Hill neighbors to ditch the chemicals and go green in the garden (they are very suspicious of her). She’ll blog about garden gadgets, the latest garden trends and her current garden disasters. She is also the ringleader for the Home&Garden section, so e-mail her with thoughts/rants/questions/bizarre observations. sue.kidd@thenewstribune.com. Use it.

Contact us at Sue.Kidd@thenewstribune.com Craig.Sailor@thenewstribune.com

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