Well,my Tulip growing season is over now, and it's starting to get really hot here. I learned a good lesson this time (it's only my second tulip attempt, this time with very high quality bulbs) - overwatering is bad! Some of my cultivars bloomed beautifully, and some just didn't quite make it to a full flower stage before wilting and shrinking up. But overall, it was pretty cool.
So now, I have lots of bulbs in the ground, and about three clay pots full of bulbs as well. I dug up some of the non-blooming bulbs from one clay pot and found that a few of them were soft and rotted. The others from that same pot that *did* bloom, came up nice and dry, and with lots of new baby bulbs attached to the bottom. I haven't yet touched the bulbs in the other clay pots.
Here's the question: I live in the Arizona desert, so I really can't expect the bulbs to survive outside all summer, even with dry dirt around them. They're going to bake in the clay pots. So my options are to dig them up now, let them dry out, and then store them somewhere less hot than outside till the fall, when I can chill them for 12 weeks, then replant. Alternatively, I can leave them in the pots and just relocate the pots to someplace less hot (like the garage, but it gets plenty hot in there too) and hope for the best. I'm afraid that if the bulbs are regenerating and developing new baby bulbs, they need to be left alone, but OTOH, i don't want to kill them with heat.
Any ideas on what I should do with them? And the ones int he ground? Leave them, or dig them up?
Thanks.