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31 Years of Tulip Bloom

> From: lowery@teamzeon.com
> 
> Note to Harry who responded to my tulip question:
> 
> What type of tulips are these?  Do you fertilize?  Are they sharing the bed
> with any other plants, i.e. perennials?  What is the soil like?  Is it
> moist?  You said your tulip leaves come out in December...mine never show
> up that early, usually waiting until April/May...is this indicative of your
> particular type of tulip?
> 
> Please, please share your secrets!  Obviously 31 years can't be wrong.

Dear Lowery: You're right: 31 years can't be wrong.  The tulips are doing 
things right.  The trouble is I don't know what it is that's causing 
them to survive.  Your "please, please share your secrets!" needs to be 
addressed to the tulips, not to me!

However, I *can* answer questions.  First there are a great variety of 
tulips in this bed.  Because it is the only place on the property where 
tulips seem to survive (among the places I've tried), I tend to plant new 
acquisitions there.  I don't buy tulips anymore, my budget being too 
small.  But I often receive tulips as gifts from friends who like to 
replace their tulips every year with new bulbs (on the theory that they 
aren't going to do well the second year); they give them to me, usually 
with the admonition "Here are some bulbs for your Dutch garden."  The 
name "Dutch garden" was invented by a friend who proposed that my 30-foot 
shaded tulip bed is official Netherlands territory, probably under the 
jurisdiction of the Dutch embassy, which is only 13 miles away.  If this 
is true, i. e. that my tulip bed is really Dutch soil, well, of course 
that explains everything.  I don't know anyone in the Dutch embassy.

Originally, most of the tulips in the bed were white, as the bed was part 
of my white garden.  But their success has caused me to place a great 
variety of tulips there.  I think most of the tulips are Darwins, but 
I've lost track of the names of most of the various kinds.  There are no 
species tulips there.  And there is no there there. 
 > 
The bed has never been fertilized.  However, I do not rake leaves, and so 
the old leaves lie there all winter, with the tulips coming up through 
them each spring (and the tulip leaves coming up through them during the 
winter).  Under this carpet of leaves, the soil tends to remain moist most 
of the year.  But in the summer it dries out quite thoroughly.  My 
impression is that our drought of the past three months has not really 
been broken yet, although we've had almost an inch of rain recently.  
Late summer is very dry in Maryland almost every year.

Yes, other perennials share this bed; otherwise, it would be quite barren 
all summer and fall.  Quite a few are foliage plants, e. g. rohdeas and 
some hostas.  There is also a lot of variegated Solomon's seal, and 
stylophorum (wild poppy) self-sows abundantly.  Between the sweet gum and 
the parrotia are a white Canadian redbud and an enkianthus.  There are 
also Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica), some sweet woodruff, and 
some Japanese painted ferns.  Also white daffodils.  Across the driveway, 
under similar conditions, lungwort has made a thirty-foot carpet, and I'm 
thinking of moving some into the tulip bed.  I've introduced a few 
primroses adjacent the tulips, but they don't care for the summer 
dryness, and only just manage to hold on.  All those other perennials 
survive the drought conditions quite well.

Harry, Beltsville, Maryland, zone 7a
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