How to Prune Bulbs
Crocus, hyacinth, daffodils and tulips are just a few of the bulbs that provide a colorful and fragrant addition to gardens. However, as beautiful as they are, once the bulbs have bloomed, all that is left is the foliage. When and how a gardener prunes a bulb determines whether the flower comes back the following season. Does this Spark an idea?
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Things You'll Need
- Pruning shears
- Complete plant food
- Flowers for hiding bulb foliage
- Plant markers (optional)
Instructions
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Cut off spent flowers on the bulbs. According to "The Complete Flower Garden Book ," cut the entire flower stem down to the base of the plant.
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Leave the foliage of the flowers alone until the leaves have completely died down. Flower Gardening Made Easy.com explains that this allows the bulb to "recharge"' for the following year's flowers. Some foliage takes a long time to completely die back; sometimes as long as two or three months .
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Feed the bulbs with a complete plant food and continue to water them until the foliage completely dies down.
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Hide the bulb's foliage by planting other summer-flowering annuals and perennials between the bulbs. Forget-me-nots, cosmos and zinnias grow tall enough to hide the bulb's foliage until it fades. Since many bulbs are planted deep, they won't be disturbed by planting seeds and flowers.
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Prune the bulb's wilted foliage completely to the ground. Use plant markers to identify the location of these bulbs to prevent accidentally digging them up the next season or mistaking them for weeds and inadvertently spraying them with a herbicide.
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Tips & Warnings
If the foliage is too ugly to bear, treat the bulbs as an annual and pull them up once the flower fades.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit http://www.morguefile.com/archive/display/217264
