What to Do With Hyacinth Bulbs After Flowering? - DutchGrown™ (2024)

FAQs

What to Do With Hyacinth Bulbs After Flowering? - DutchGrown™? ›

After the bulb has bloomed, remove the faded flower spike so that the plant's energy is not wasted in forming seed heads. All the nutrients contained in the foliage will return to the bulb, where next season's bloom is already forming.

With potted hyacinths, the easiest way to do this is to store the bulbs pot and all until autumn. The soil can dry out completely. However, you can also lift them and store the bulbs on their own if you want to use the container for something else meanwhile.

After Your Hyacinth is Done Blooming

While you should have kept their leaves intact as long as possible, it's now safe to trim them back to just the bulb and roots. Cut back dead foliage to the base of the bulb and store the whole pot in a cool, dry, and dark space for some beauty sleep. Do not water or feed the plant.

Hyacinth bulbs can remain in the ground throughout the year in most planting zones. If you live a warm climate where temperatures do not get below 60°F, bulbs should be dug up in the fall and refrigerated in a cool, dry area for 6 to 8 weeks. Hyacinths require a period of colder weather to bloom.

Due to their attractive flowers and delicious smell, potted hyacinths are a popular gift. Once they're done blooming, though, don't rush to throw them away. With a little care, you can keep your indoor hyacinth after blooming to ensure many more fragrant blossoms in the future.

Forced hyacinth bulbs for indoor displays won't be suitable for using indoors again, but you can plant them outside and they'll flower every spring for years to come.

Then cut or pull off the leaves and leave the bulbs in the ground. Another option is to dig up the bulbs after the foliage has faded, store them somewhere cool and dry, and then replant in fall.

All you need to know about Hyacinths. Blooming starts in early to mid-spring and lasts about two weeks, depending on the weather. Hyacinths flower only once each year, and they parade their heavily fragrant blooms at the same time as early tulips and mid-season daffodils.

Hyacinth bulbs will spread and multiply if left in the ground to return the next year; however, they will generally only last 3 or 4 years.

Hyacinths bloom in late spring, generally later than most daffodils and other early bloomers. However, that single bloom time lasts for up to four weeks, so you'll get a lot of mileage from that one bloom. Hyacinths typically have a lifespan of about five years, coming back each season.

Do squirrels eat hyacinth bulbs? ›

Squirrels and chipmunks avoid daffodils—which are poisonous—as well as alliums, scilla, hyacinth, grape hyacinth (muscari), fritillaria, camassia, chionodoxa, snowdrop (galanthus), and summer snowflake (leucojum). Tulips, unfortunately, are a delicacy for them.

After you have watered the container you may move it to the refrigerator or chill cellar. Once 10-16 weeks has passed and you start to see tender shoots forming, you can gradually expose the bulbs to sunlight and warmer temperatures.

In Greek mythology, Hyacinthus was a Spartan prince of remarkable beauty and a lover of the sun god Apollo. He was also admired by Zephyrus, the god of the West wind, Boreas, the god of the North wind and a mortal man named Thamyris. Hyacinthus chose Apollo over the others.

Mature plants will slowly produce offset or bulbets at the base of the bulb. These can be gently pried off the mother bulb and planted directly into the garden. Again, it may take a hyacinth several years to produce offsets and then it will take several more years for those offsets to produce flowers.

Plant hyacinth bulbs in the late summer to early fall.

Don't plant any later than about a month before the first frost. Your bulb needs time to establish itself before the coming of the cold.