Over-wintering potted tulips

by Ray
(Mississauga, Ontario)

I've been looking all over the web for some helpful advice on how to re-bloom tulips. I live in southern Ontario, on the 22nd floor, facing north-east. I planted bulbs in a large 15" plastic pot, very, very late (march'08) Not surprisingly, they didn't bloom, altho' many enterprising ones did throw up a few leaves. I let the scant foliage die down & kept the pot realtively moist right thru' summer as we've had a lot of rain. It's now gotten quite cold for this time of the year, with temeratures as low as -1C, & high of 7-11C. I plan to wrap the pot in bubble wrap to protect the bulbs from freezing, but cannot place the rather large pot in my fridge. Would it be okay to leave it out for the winter, which will go down to as low as -20C. My question is if there is anything I can do for the tulips to bloom in spring? Should I put any kind of fertiliser to feed the bulbs during winter? Or is this a wasted exercise??
Thanks for any help/advice you can give.

Doug says that feeding the bulbs now is a waste of time - you feed when the leaves are growing so they feed the bulbs.

You want to "chill" the bulbs for 14-16 weeks. But if you let them freeze solid - the odds are that they'll die.

You could bury the pot in the ground to further protect it and then dig it up again to bring it into the house. But leaving it standing alone (with only a bit of protection) is going to allow the pot/soil to go to whatever air temperature is around it. And that will be as low as your lowest temperature and the bulbs (that will take a lot of abuse in the slow moving soil temperatures) will be killed off by the fast up and downs in extremes.

Good luck with them.