Tell me your favorite tulips

I am wondering which are the best tulips to plant? I have had very poor success with tulips which may be due to my zone 10, but I do pre chill them. I would like to hear which tulips are most successful for people. This may mean that they came back every year, or that they did not fall apart in the rain. My only success has been with a darwin hybrid. I have also heard Queen of Night is easy to grow, but a black flower seem a bit morbid. I would like to pick the varieties that appear to be the most hardy and successful. Please share any growing tips.

My sister lives in Berkeley , Bug Girl and she has never had success either. You need a pretty prolonged chill and maybe it is just too hard to substitute the inground period.

I did see some very nice tulips near my house in someone's front yard, so I believe it can be done, we just won't get the same results as others with in the ground chilling. I did have one bulb that kept coming back without being dug up. I am not sure, but it may be Olympic Flame. So I am getting some more of those this year.

I found out you can not put fruits in the refrigator with the tulips, because the fruits create a gas that harms them. I know have a separate refrigator just for the bulbs.

Bug_Girl, you can put them in the same refrigerator, but not in the same crisper bin :) When I lived in a slightly warmer area than here, I happened to have a second fridge in the garage, and used one crisper bin to chill the bulbs. I had good luck with the Darwin tulips - they put on a good show three years running.

My personal favorite tulips are the lily types and the peony flowered ones (each has a very different style from the other, but I like them both.) I snagged two boxes (70 bulbs each) of 'Angelique' and 'White Upstar' at Sam's last weekend. Now to keep them cool until time to plant, with no second fridge these days....

What I heard was since the crisper is not air tight, that any fruit in the entire thing can ruin them, but I am sure myself.

I was going to get a darwin mix but 100 minumum is too many bulbs. How can you fit two boxes of 70? Thank you for writing, let me know if it works out. The small refrigator was very cheap at Costco, but it still could not fit that many.

I did get good results with that one Darwin hybrid without digging it up, but that may be a one of a kind bulb. I am trying them again as a test, plus I am cooling last years bulbs.

Hmmm, well I couldn't tell you for sure, as I didn't keep fruit in the second fridge - I had read/heard that as long as they weren't in the same bin, they'd be fine.

And since we've moved to zone 6b, I'm not as concerned with pre-chilling the bulbs, as we *should* get enough cold weather to take care of their requirements.

Here's an article I found when I Googled for "bulbs for warm climates": http://www.bulb.com/spring/likehot.asp It has a list of cultivars - hope that helps :)

Thank you very much for that list, I am going to save it, it too late for this year, but I have been looking for such a list for a while. However, I did notice it did say, the same refrigator and not the same crisper. I have two crispers also and I explained this to people on the garden web and they said, the same refrigator. Since I got terrible results that year, I think they may be right. That is why I bought the second refrigator. But, if you are getting good results with the separate crisper, that is all that matters.