I do take the mulch of once they start pushing up. But they should be able to push through on their own. I just like to remove it so it’s not clinging to the flowers when I go to harvest. One less step to clean them up and process them then.

Hi Jennie , I am using your method of No Till Tulips. The tulips are just coming up on 02/03/2023 , after moving a bit of straw and checking their progress this morning. I was wondering if I should remove the straw? I put it on pretty thick.

Glad you found the post! While bulbs do great in these beds, annuals will need contact with the actual soil, not just compost, to thrive. There was a recent podcast episode about the basics of no-till bed preparation. Give that a listen as it goes into why you should plant annuals into straight compost.

Question- I decided to also do this for some of my daffodils as an experiment but am wondering if I can grow any of my annuals in these straight compost beds or if the compost needs to be redistributed with other fillers like peat moss and pine bark for year round growing?

Thank you so much, Jennie! I so appreciate you!!

Thank you so much for reporting back, Rebecca! That’s awesome to hear about the leaf mold working. Regarding using bark mulch, it might work if the bark is chipped up really small. If it’s in big chunky pieces, the tulips pushing through that extra heavy object may distort their growth. But I’ve never tried it so I can’t say for sure. Just my gut. Regarding depth, my bulbs are 6″-8″ below the surface.

I wanted to come back and report the leaf mold worked great last year 🙂

Also — to ask a follow up!

This year my county has totally run out of leaf mold, but they still have unlimited free bark mulch available.

Would using bark mulch instead of leaf mold work in the place of compost? Or would that be a bad idea?

Also, forgive me if I am missing something–I read through the entire article and all the comments and can’t seem to find this: how deep a layer of compost do you do on top of the tulip bulbs?

Thank you for the beauty you bring to the world!

We pull the entire tulip plant (bulb, leaves and all) at the time of harvest. So there’s not foliage left in the bed once tulips are harvested. But note that we do not plant directly into these bed of pure compost after the tulips are done. We disassemble this temporary tulip bed and spread the compost out on other beds. You shouldn’t be planting most crops into straight compost as they won’t have a balanced environment for their roots to grow properly.