Question: I’m growing tulips, but they aren’t doing what I expected. Most of them bloomed the first year, and almost none of them have bloomed since. What can I do to promote more flowers? I’m not even getting very many leaves recently.

Answer: The showy hybrid types of tulips are best used as garden annuals in Texas. They just don’t “come back” and bloom again in successive years very well. You might try a limited planting of the species types of tulips. These are generally smaller-flowering, often with several flowers per stalk. They establish and colonize more readily than their hybrid counterparts. They’ll generally have botanical-looking names such as Tulipa clusiana, T. greigii, T. kaufmanniana or T. praestans, among several others.