Bulbs: 95% failure rate on tulips. What happened?, 1 by David_Paul

David_Paul wrote:
The good news is the tulips were 25% off.

The bad news is 95% of them didn't come up.

The players: Single Early Tulips

50 Tulip Bellona: Golden-yellow.
50 Tulip Christmas Dream: Fuchsia-rose.
50 Tulip Couleur Cardinal: Scarlet-red, flushed purple.
50 Tulip Princess Irene: Orange flushed purple.
50 Tulip Purple Prince: Purple.
50 Tulip White Marvel: White

The plot: Planted days after they arrived the first week of November in the same bed Monte Carlo Double early tulips did well last year. Only difference this year is I put down a 4" layer of mulch (which was removed the end of Feb).

Deer are not the villians as we have none. Moles like this bed (and the garden and the yard) but have never harmed anything. I dug a little today and found no bulbs except one slimey something which may have once been a tulip. The vendor is well known and well respect so I shall not name names but a failure there is unlikely (but not impossible I suppose).

Crocus, chionodoxa, puschkinia, scilla, minature daffodils, species tulips, muscari and puschkinia are in the lawn to the right of the bed and did fine. Hyacinth and Red Emperor tulips (which I thought I had torn up last spring but came back) are in the triangle to the left of the bed and did fine.

Any ideas on what might have caused a near total failure of the single early tulips?