What Happens If You Don’t Plant Tulip Bulbs Deep Enough?

Tulips provide a pop of color in any room you place them in. Very colorful flowers that are easy to grow and included in the most popular spring flower list – not to mention – tulips are the third most popular flowers around the world.

Tulips come in different shapes, height and colors such as:

• Purple
• Maroon
• White
• Yellow
• Cream
• Red
• Pink
• Orange
• Salmon
• Green

And also a colorful mixture of vermillion, bronze, brown, and apricot.

It is a fact that tulips are also easy to grow where you need the tulip bulb planted into the soil at a certain depth.

If you don’t plant tulip bulbs deep enough, you risk the danger of it getting discovered by chipmunks and squirrels, and it can be affected by the changes in weather, such as freezing temperature.

Tulip bulbs that are planted not too deep enough may cause it to have an affected development, it may also be not as hardy as the tulip bulbs planted at the right depth.

What You Need To Consider When Planting Your Tulip Bulbs

• Planning is the key to having a successful tulip growth. You need to know where you will plant your tulip bulbs, and how you plan to take care of them so it can fully grow.
• You should plant your tulip bulbs the soonest time you brought them home, you can store it for a few days as long as it is in a cool place.
• Do not soak it in a container with water, keep it in a dry and cool location.
• Plant your bulbs once the temperature is between 40 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
• Choose a spot where your tulip bulbs will get the sunshine that it will require, not anywhere that will leave them under a shade.
• Use a soil that is well-draining and not the soggy quality. Pick a spot where there are not too many rocks in the soil, and there should be no presence of weeds.
• It does not require soil that is too wet, but it will need just enough moisture for it to survive.
• Although you can find information over the internet on the depth and the hole the tulip bulbs require, most planters of tulips base it on three times the height of the bulb.
• Do not plant your bulbs too deep, cause flowers will bloom too late and sometimes fail to do so. Shallow planting may cause a weak plant that can get easily damaged by animals or get affected by the change in temperature. Use the right depth when planting your tulip bulb, some planters of tulip bulbs follow the 8-inches deep from the base of the bulb rule. However, it is also a practice that the bigger the bulb, the deeper hole it will require. 
• Mixing organic material into the soil is a smart idea, and the addition of approved bulb fertilizer can help as well.
• Once you planted the bulbs, you need to water them with just the right amount without flooding the soil.
• If you want to have a garden with different colors of bloom, you can plant the bulbs strategically, where on one lane there will be blooms of yellow and then another will be red blooms, so forth and so on.

Caring For Your Tulip Bulbs

• Once you are done with planting your tulip bulbs, you need to water them. You need not do this often, but you must check if the soil is getting dry or there is not enough moisture to keep your tulip bulbs healthy.
• Once you see a break and there are leaves already emerging, you can give it another light sprinkling of water.
• Watering your tulip bulbs is ideal during humid or summer days. Sometimes you will not get even a drop of rain in some areas, and your tulip bulbs will need their ration of water and need to keep the moisture of the soil. As long as there is rainfall, you need not water your tulip bulb since nature is taking care of it.
• If you find your tulip bulbs soaked in water because of continuous rain in your area, best to get something to drain the excess water that is keeping your tulip bulbs swimming in water. Continuous days of water soaking may mean the demise of your bulbs, and it may not get the chance to grow into a beautiful tulip.
• For an area that seems to collect water out of nowhere, it would be best to remove your tulip plantings there cause it will not survive for long. Soil should be well-draining for better results.
• Fertilization is required for your tulip bulbs, but should be balanced. Do not overuse fertilizer for your bulbs cause this may be harmful instead of being beneficial. Mixing a certain amount of fertilizer in the soil during planting is alright, and then there is no need for a frequent sprinkling of the fertilizer.
• Stopping critters from destroying your tulip bulbs is important. Although you cannot watch your garden 24 hours a day, you can surround it with some protection to ward off squirrels or chipmunks from snacking on your tulip bulbs. You can also sprinkle some hen manure fertilizer as the smell is offensive to squirrels.
• Deer are another lover of tulip bulbs or grown tulips, best to find a spray that will keep the deer away or something like a deer repellent. If deers are uncontrollable, you may need to plant your tulip bulbs in pots instead of the soil in your garden directly.

Problems You Can Encounter With Some Tulip Bulbs.

One fungal disease of a tulip bulb or tulips is called Botrytis blight, bulbs appear as if covered in lesions. If on a full-grown tulip, there is weakening and collapse of the stems.

Gray bulb rot is another fungal disease the causes the bulbs to wither after it turns gray. You will notice that your tulip bulb is not growing nor emerging at all, and this is the usual reason.

Pythium root rot is a common issue with bulbs where there are brown and gray soft spots on the bulb, and the shoots that are supposed to emerge will rot.

There is also the stem and bulb nematode that gives the bulb spongy patches and will not grow fully.

These are some problems that may be encountered while trying to grow a tulip bulb that if left unchecked will not give the tulip bulb a chance to grow and mature.

How To Treat Tulip Bulb Disease

If you encounter tulip bulb disease, remove the infected plant immediately cause there is a danger that the other plants may get infected. It is no longer ideal to plant in that spot for the next few years cause the disease-causing pathogens may still be there underneath the soil and will not be suitable for your future tulip bulbs. 

How Do You Pick The Most Healthy Tulip Bulb?

• Bulbs should not be soft or spongy to touch. There should be enough firmness and should appear healthy and not discolored. You should be thorough in examining the bulb before purchase cause unhealthy bulbs can give you headaches, eventually.
• Choose bulbs that don’t have slimy substances, no damage, and not a sign of disease.
• Beware of rotting tulip bulbs, and you can check this if you drop the bulbs in water and it floats – this is a sign that it has rotted. If it sinks, then this is a healthy tulip bulb. 
• If you want to have a sizeable bloom, pick larger tulip bulbs, cause the bigger the bulb, the bigger the bloom will be.
• If you are to buy tulip bulbs, only go to trusted garden shops, although, you may need to pay a bit more, it ensures you of healthy bulbs to start with.

Some good to know info about tulips

• There are 150 known species of Tulips, and now over 3K varieties of tulips all over the world, and it keeps growing.
• Most of the harvested and cultivated tulips came from the Netherlands as they commercially produced over 3 billion each year.
• The Turks of the Ottoman Empire were the first to cultivate the tulip, as early as 1,000 AD.
• Tulips symbolize beauty, color, happiness, dreaminess, imagination, love, and joy.
• They took the word Tulip from the Turkish word “tulbend” for the turban.
• Tulips are considered the flower you can give to someone whom you love deeply.
• Tulips came from the lily family.
• Tulips only bloom for as long as 3 to 7 days during springtime.
• Tulips can still grow even after you cut them.
• Red tulips symbolize love, while the purple color means loyalty, and white means you are sorry.
• Tulips were once the most expensive flower that you can buy, they said it to cost 10-times more during the 1600s. It was called �Tulip Mania’ during those days.
• You can use Tulip petals as a replacement for onions if in case you run out of them.
• Tulips can give the needed oomph in any space, and it won’t cost you that much to purchase nowadays.
• It is also widely used during home staging because of the variety of color options that can go with any color of the house being sold.
• The tulip is the symbol of the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation.