tulips gone!

Last year my husband helped me plant 70 tulip bulbs and I was really looking forwards to the display this year. Only five bulbs sprouted and flowered. What a disappointment. I used a spray to repel the little crtiters but they seem to have liked it, why else did I only get five out of 70? Please give me an idea of what I can do next time to have a better result. btw there was a little hole in place of every bulb.

Tulips usually do lousy after the first year. It'll take several years for them to rebloom I find. I just plant new ones in the fall. I pull them up and throw them into the a little wooded area in my back yard and forget them. A year or 2 later they start blooming again.

The squirrels eat all mine and those of my next door neighbor. Funny, because the neighbors across the street grow them fine.

I planted new bulbs last week and the squirrels have been going mad digging up bulbs , it's really ticking me off!!

The squirrels had better stay away from mine. I planted over 300 last weekend of various bulbs. They have enough acorns - I have noticed they are placing their acorns near my bulbs - and two bulbs are missing - but no activity since Sunday night.

Try planting your tulips deeper as by planting them at 8" rather than at 6" it may help to trick the squirrels who mostly dig up the bulbs that they accidentally find while they are planting their winter stash of acorns which they usually plant much shallower than at 8"deep.

Or you can try planting a mess of tulips in one area and cover that spot up for the fall with a chicken wire. Just unroll some of the wire and lay it over the surface of the planted tulip area and hold it in place with some flower pots, or logs or rocks and then take it up after the ground freezes.

Other wise borrow a dog for the fall to chase the squirrels away from your yard. My gals do a good job, but we only have a few squirrels, though the rabbits and deer are our big problem as the dogs sleep at night while the pests nibble away. We have put up deer fence with a rabbit fence along the bottom of it to keep them out of the part of our property that we plant with the tulips. Daffodils go everywhere and I can't get enough of them. Good luck. Here is a shot of Nell and Winnie protecting the tulips. Patti

This message was edited Sep 30, 2011 11:02 AM

Beautiful Patti!

My dogs are confined to the back yard, my bulbs are in the front- as are the squirrels, deer and rabbits...oh well. The tips of all of my hosta have been disappearing this week. The deer are back in full force already. Year before last we had 15 in the front yard all at once.

I pity you. We have a huge herd too, but except for one area that has some hosta which also gotten eaten last week, the rest of the stuff planted in their roaming area is mostly plant materials that they generally (ha) ignore. When I find damage, I move the plants to the fenced in part of our yard so most of the desirable stuff is now behind the fence. However each year they seem to be expanding their palate and go after plants that they never use to eat. But that shot of them at your home shows how blatant and impossible they are to control without fencing. And even fencing doesn't work everywhere. I hate them in my garden but still like watching them when they aren't eating my plants. Patti

I plant sacrificial hosta for them knowing if they have some on the edges of the property, not so many will be eaten elsewhere. I have so many hosta I feel like they are coming out my ears. And they aren't "special" ones, just your "typical" landscape ones you get at any nursery. So no skin off my butt.
The dogs will go nuts in the middle of the night because they can hear them in the front yard. But yes, we love to watch them. There are many that were in the yard in 2010 that had broken limbs. Felt bad so we were feeding them so they wouldnt have to cross the street. They would make their swamp loop and be by the house every 7-10 days. We weren't the only ones feeding in the neighborhood.
Found out though that if they are really injured and likely not to survive, we can call the PD/DNR and have them euthanized, then stick them in our freezer for later and not have to get a tag :) Yummy. Not sure I will be doing that...think I will leave that all up to the DH.
That picture is my front yard, about 15 feet from the window. I was sitting on the couch when I took the picture with my cell phone.

The bed being attacked is in the front and the dogs don't get to go there since only the back is fenced. The deer wander through the front flower bed browsing all the while...lol. I have some bulbs to replace the stolen ones, think I will try some wire.

Great pics thanks for sharing!!

Buy large amounts of Liquid Fence. That seems to work better than any brand we'vd used. We live in a gated, Sr. Citizens community of 8500 plus residents. The deer are doing so much damage here; they will walk right down the middle of the street and look at you when they see you looking at them as they probably are thinking "Hey Lady, haven't you ever seen a deer before?" They love my roses and I need to get out there tomorrow and spray LF because it had rained so much lately. Today is first time we've seen the sun since Friday evening.

Hello,
I just wanted to share some information that my local nursery gave me. Off the subject to get to the subject, my garden is on a slight slope and it seems all the weed seeds from the grassy area wash into it (like clover and crabgrass). So I bordered it off with pretty faced concrete blocks. I filled the block holes with good bagged garden soil and planted several of them with strawberries and some with creeping phlox. (This is all testing). I also decided I wanted to try some bulbs in the holes and haven't had good success with tulips but thought I would give it a try, since I love them. I went to the nursery on a non-busy day, which was good. We began discussing the problem with growing tulips (that they seem to diminish and disappear after a couple years) in our area which is zone 5, probably the same as mableruth. This nurseryman stated there had been a study done on growing tulips. I wished I had taken down the information by who or asked if it was perhaps online for review (but didn't). Anyway, he says our climate is not ideal for tulips in that we don't get long enough winter chill like Holland does (which sounds crazy to me because I feel like we get enough winter chill :). Based on this study, there are some varieties of tulips that they label "forever" tulips. This means that those particular tulip varieties will come back year after year without the bulb dimishing. [I also understand that pests can be a problem, especially when moles make runs that mice and voles use, and mice and voles eat the bulbs. Also, one year in wanting to dig up some tulip bulbs I found what appeared to be wire worms eating the bulbs.] Possibly through internet search, one could find the information on the study/research of tulips that would list those varieties which are better suited for our climate. And then if you don't have pest problems, growing those varieties to see if they do better. T

My mother use to grow some real nice tulips. But that was back when we had harder winters and it would snow and stay for months.