Tulips are generous plants for about three weeks, then things can go wrong fast. A shoot collapses overnight, petals open with brown freckles across them, or a whole row comes up blind and you are left staring at bare soil. Most tulip failures in British gardens come down to a handful of familiar culprits, and nearly all of them are easier to deal with when you catch them early. Work through this checklist from the first green tips in February to lifting time in June.
Start with a diagnosis, not a spray
Before you reach for anything, decide what you are actually looking at. Root, bulb, stem and petal problems need different responses, and treating the wrong one wastes a season.
- Shoots bitten off at soil level, or leaves with clean holes — slugs and snails.
- Brown spots spreading into grey, fuzzy patches on leaves and stems — grey mould, known in tulips as tulip fire.
- Soft, brown, musty-smelling bulbs; shoots that flop or never appear — bulb rot, usually linked to wet soil.
- Mottled or streaky leaves, flowers with odd splashes of colour — virus, spread by aphids.
- Swollen, twisted stems and stunted leaves — eelworm, which lives in the soil.
- Bulbs dug up, holes in the bed, compost scattered about — squirrels, mice or voles.
Slugs and snails: damage that starts in February
Tulip shoots are soft, sweet and push up at exactly the moment slugs become active again. The first sign is usually a clean bite taken out of a young leaf, or a shoot reduced to a stub overnight. By the time the flowers open, the damage is done.
Go out with a torch after dark, especially after rain — that is when you will find most of them, and hand-picking genuinely works in a small garden. Keep the bed tidy, clear damp leaf litter and avoid thick mulches around emerging shoots. Grit, wool pellets and copper tape can help in pots, though none is foolproof. If you use slug pellets, choose a ferric phosphate product, follow the label exactly and keep it away from pets, children and wildlife.
Tulip fire: grey mould above the ground
Tulip fire, caused by Botrytis tulipae, is the most common disease of tulips in the UK and it loves a damp, cool spring. Look for small brown spots on the leaves that spread and merge, with a grey fuzzy coating in humid weather. Stems weaken and topple, buds fail to open, and badly affected plants look scorched.
There is no cure for an infected plant. Lift it whole, bulb and all, and put it in the bin rather than the compost heap. The fungus survives in soil for a few years, so do not replant tulips in that spot — grow something unrelated there instead, and replace the compost in affected pots. Space your plantings so air moves between the leaves, water the soil rather than the foliage, and water in the morning so leaves dry before evening. Good sanitation does more than anything else.
Bulb rot: the problem below the soil
If a tulip comes up thin and yellow, or simply fails to appear, dig gently around it. A rotted bulb is soft, brown and unpleasant-smelling, sometimes with a white or pinkish mould around the base. This is usually a drainage problem rather than an infection you brought home.
Heavy clay, a waterlogged winter, pots standing in saucers of water, or bulbs bruised in storage all invite rot. Prevention is straightforward: fork in grit and organic matter before planting, plant at two to three times the bulb's own depth, and make sure containers have plenty of drainage holes and are raised off the ground. Handle bulbs gently in autumn and bin any that feel soft or squashy — one bad bulb in a pot can spoil the lot.
Virus, aphids and eelworm
Tulip breaking virus produces mottled leaves and petals streaked with unexpected colour. The dramatic "broken" tulips of seventeenth-century Dutch paintings were prized specimens of exactly this virus, but in a modern garden it means weak plants and fewer flowers. It spreads from plant to plant via aphids, so hosing or squashing aphids off soft tips and buds in spring genuinely limits the damage.
Eelworm is the harder problem. Affected tulips have swollen, distorted stems and stunted leaves, and the nematodes can survive in the soil for years. There is no treatment: lift and bin the plants, and do not grow tulips, narcissi or onions in that ground for several seasons.
Squirrels, mice and voles
If bulbs vanish within days of planting, wildlife is the likely thief. Squirrels dig neat holes and often leave bulbs lying on the surface; mice and voles tunnel in from below and eat them quietly. Planting deeper than usual — around 20cm — helps, as does firming the soil well afterwards. Lay chicken wire or pea netting over the bed and peg it down, removing it once shoots are up. In pots, a generous layer of grit on the surface discourages digging.
Cutting your losses, and planning for next spring
Sometimes the sensible answer is to start again. In the UK many gardeners treat tulips as annuals, lifting and composting them after flowering and buying fresh bulbs each autumn — it avoids a build-up of disease and gives you a clean, reliable display.
- Buy firm, heavy bulbs from a reputable supplier and reject anything soft or mouldy.
- Plant in free-draining soil or fresh compost, at the correct depth, in October or November.
- Rotate your planting spots so tulips do not follow tulips.
- Remove and bin any suspicious foliage the moment you spot it.
- Deadhead after flowering, but leave the leaves for six weeks to feed the bulb.
- If you lift bulbs, dry them thoroughly and store them cool, dark and airy.
Keep a note of which beds have had trouble, because tulip fire and eelworm both linger in the soil. Give those spots a rest from tulips for three or four years and use the space for something else. A little detective work now saves a lot of disappointment when April comes round again.
Photo: OnzeCreativitijd / Pixabay
