Tulips (Tulipa gesneriana) of the Liliaceae family was originated from Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine.
It comes from different shapes and sizes and different colors that bring beauty in the garden.
They tolerates most in early winter to produce best quality flowers, the reasons they're grown for their beautiful flowers.
They're considered as a hardy spring-blooming bulbs that rivals the daffodil in terms of popularity.
Like sunflower, tulips are ideal for attracting bees and other beneficial insects used in pollination flowers.
There unique characteristics is their ability to only produce flowers once a year, in the first early part of spring season.
The culture of Tulips Before you plant tulips, work out your area by making some plots.
Properly pulverize the soil, and mix with dried manures, compost, wood ash, bone meal, and peat moss if you think your soil is somewhat sandy.
Level the plots, making the center a little higher than the sides to allow draining of rain water to both sides of the plots.
After the plots are properly cultivated and ready for planting, plant a single bulb in every hole 4 - 5 inches depth at a distance of 6 inches between rows.
After planting the bulbs, water the entire ground to let the soil around settle down around the bulbs.
The benefits of watering them early on when the buds are growing can enhance taller stems and bigger heads, and this will give more beauty to your plants.
To avoid severe damage, apply mulch to your newly growing plants with rice straws, grass clippings, or leaves gathered in your landscape after the first frost.
When the early spring comes, remove those mulching materials, the plants can now withstand with the good weather condition.
Pests and diseases.
Some common diseases of tulips are blight that causes brown flecks on the leaves, flowers becomes limp and turns to brown or gray after a couple of weeks.
If your plants are affected by this diseases, they should be uprooted and immediately burn them to avoid spreading of the disease to other healthy plants.
Another disease of tulips is the gray bulb rot.
This disease attacks the bulb under the soil, causing them to become too soggy.
Crown rot is also one disease that causes the bulbs and flowers to die.
However, this only occurs in some rare cases and doesn't cause too much damage to the entire plant population.
Harvesting.
Tulips are harvested as cut flowers.
They are harvested when half of the buds are colored and the other half are green.
Other varieties can be harvested when all the buds' colors are already fully dominated.
Happy gardening!