You Can Divide All Bulb Plants After Flowering

Q. I am redesigning a landscape and have to dig out tulip bulbs from last year. What should I do with them? And how and when do I divide other bulb plants such as day lily?

A: Divide all bulbous-type plants after flowering, when dormancy has set in and active green growth stops. Your tulips, when lifted, can be stored until fall in a dry, cool place. (Hang them in mesh bags to allow air circulation.) Or you can replant them immediately. Check for cut or damaged bulbs and discard those.

Daffodil clumps are generally divided when the plant becomes crowded and begins to produce wads of green instead of flowering well. Carefully extract the entire clump, and separate the smaller new bulbs from the larger ones. Replant now or in the fall, setting them several inches apart. (Growth will not begin again until we have cooling soils and deep winter rains.)

Day lilies can be divided almost anytime, but this is usually done in the fall or early spring. An overgrown day-lily clump can require a team of horses to divide; you may have to poke and pry at it with a garden fork. Reduce the mass to smaller pieces and replant the pieces.

Bulbs, to generalize, multiply well if they are comfortably established in a garden and are easy to divide for more plants.

Q: How can I keep my jasmine in a basket in full bloom? The plant was gorgeous when I got it, but bloom is ceasing.

A: Most jasmines have certain periods of flowering followed by a rest period, as you might expect with other vines or shrubby plants. They are often forced into bloom in greenhouses and sold in bud as bloom is beginning. Without knowing the particular species of plant you have, it's difficult to predict the exact flowering pattern. However, none of them bloom constantly. Most jasmines need regular watering, and most are not hardy in our Northwest winters, so your basket will need to be protected from cold through the winter.

Keeping it watered and fertilized with any balanced fertilizer (such as 5-10-10) will keep it healthy, but that vigorous bloom is abating through no fault of your own. It should move into a summer-bloom cycle next year.

Q: I had an amaryllis bulb in a large tub planter outdoors for four years. Each spring it would send up leaves, but no flowers. After reading your article on amaryllis in February, I decided to dig it up (it was the size of a small cantaloupe), put it in a pot and bring it indoors. By April it produced flower stalks that bloomed in May. What should I do with it now?

A: Put the potted bulb outdoors in part sun/shade and keep it well watered and fertilized. When it begins to yellow its foliage, let it go dry and put it in a dark place for several months to give it a dormant period. After at least two months of rest, you can start it into growth again by watering it. Indoors, a brightly lit location is best for it. It may flower for you again this winter.

Gardening appears Friday in Scene and Sunday in Home/Real Estate. It is prepared by George Pinyuh and Holly Kennell, Washington State University/King County Cooperative Extension agents; Mary Robson, Master Gardener program assistant, and volunteer Master Gardeners.