Your bulbs land in September. The ground is not ready until October, and in some years you are still waiting into November. So the box sits somewhere in the house for a few weeks, and where you store flower bulbs in the meantime turns out to matter more than most people expect.
The short version is this. Store flower bulbs somewhere cool, dark, dry and breezy, in mesh or paper rather than sealed plastic, and keep them well away from ripening fruit. Store flower bulbs that way and a firm bulb stays firm until planting day. Get it wrong and you are planting mould.
How should you store flower bulbs before planting?
Store flower bulbs in a dark, dry, well ventilated spot between about 10 and 18 C, which is 50 to 65 F, and never below freezing. Use open mesh or paper bags in a single layer. No sealed plastic, no damp corner, no sunny windowsill, and no shelf beside ripening apples.
That covers most of it. The rest is knowing why each condition is on the list, because once you understand why you store flower bulbs that way you can improvise in whatever house you actually have.
The four things a resting bulb needs
Darkness. Light tells a bulb the season has moved on. Store flower bulbs in a bright room and they start pushing pale shoots early, and a shoot that grows in a paper bag is a shoot that is not available for spring.
Moving air. A dormant bulb is still breathing, slowly. Air moving around it carries away the moisture it gives off. Still, trapped air is how a bag of good bulbs turns into a bag of blue green mould in a fortnight.
Cool, but not frozen. Warm rooms speed everything up and dry bulbs out. Freezing bursts them from the inside. An unheated spare room, a stair cupboard, or a garage that stays above freezing all work.
Distance from fruit. Ripening apples, pears, bananas and tomatoes give off ethylene gas, which damages the flower bud already formed inside a spring bulb. The result is a healthy set of leaves in April with no flower on top. Gardeners call that a blind bulb, and you cannot see it coming.
What to keep them in
Whatever the bulbs arrived in is usually right, and the most common mistake is improving on it. Mesh bags, paper bags and open cardboard trays are all good ways to store flower bulbs, because they breathe.
- Keep them in a single layer if you have the room. Stacked bulbs at the bottom of a deep box hold moisture against each other.
- Leave the bags open at the top. A rolled paper bag is fine, a knotted plastic one is not.
- Label everything the day it arrives, and keep the packet with each variety. Three kinds of tulip look identical in October, and depth and spacing differ.
If bulbs arrived in a sealed plastic bag with holes punched in it, that is a shipping bag rather than something to store flower bulbs in. Tip them into something open when you get home.
Where in a Canadian house
Good spots to store flower bulbs: an unheated spare bedroom, a hall cupboard on an outside wall, the top of basement stairs, a cold room, or an attached garage that stays above freezing. Anywhere you would be comfortable in a sweater is about right when you store flower bulbs.
Poor spots: beside a radiator or a heat vent, on top of the fridge, in a sunny window, in a detached shed where the temperature swings and mice live, and in the crisper drawer of a fridge that also holds fruit.
Mice will eat stored bulbs and seed garlic given a quiet shed to work in, so if your only cool spot is a garage, hang the mesh bags from a hook rather than leaving them on the floor. Once the bulbs are in the ground you have a different animal to think about, and our guide to stopping squirrels digging up bulbs covers that end of it.
How long can you store flower bulbs before planting?
You can store flower bulbs comfortably for a few weeks, which is all most Canadian gardeners need between September and late October. Store flower bulbs past about two months and they soften, losing the reserves they need for a strong first spring. They are living things running down a battery, not seeds waiting patiently.
So treat storage as a bridge rather than a plan. If the weather keeps you out of the garden well into November, plant anyway as long as you can get a trowel in. A bulb in cold ground in November does far better than a bulb in a bag in December, and our zone by zone notes on when to plant tulip bulbs in Canada give the dates for each part of the country.
Seed garlic keeps a little differently
Seed garlic is happiest slightly cooler than a warm room and slightly warmer than a fridge, somewhere around 10 to 16 C, which is 50 to 60 F, with air moving around it. A kitchen counter is too warm for weeks on end and a fridge is too cold.
Two more rules.
Leave the heads whole until planting day. A cracked clove has an open wound and starts drying out immediately, so break the heads apart the morning you plant, or the evening before at the earliest.
Keep the papery skin on. That wrapper is the clove’s own protection, and any cloves that arrive with the skin already loose should go in the ground first.
Weeks of fridge storage before planting is worth naming as its own mistake, because it can push the plant into odd growth the following summer. Cold ground is what garlic wants, and a Canadian winter provides it once the cloves are in the bed.
How to tell a bulb is still good
Squeeze it gently. A sound bulb feels firm, like a small onion, with weight to it. Loose papery skin means nothing, and blue green mould on the outer skin usually brushes off.
What you do not plant, however carefully you store flower bulbs: anything soft under thumb pressure, anything with a wet spot or a smell, and anything gone light and hollow. Shrivelled and light means it dried out in a warm room and no longer has the reserves to flower.
While you are checking, sort them. Plant the biggest bulbs where you will see them from the kitchen window. Bulb size and flower size are closely linked in the first spring, which is why the varieties we chose for cold Canadian ground are graded before they go into a pack rather than scooped out of a mixed bin.
If some of yours are dahlia tubers or other tender bulbs coming out of the garden rather than going in, they follow different rules altogether, and we set those out in our guide to storing dahlias over the winter.
One question we get every autumn
Somebody always asks whether the freezer would keep them safer. The answer is no, and the reason is worth understanding rather than just accepting, so we set out what happens inside the tissue in should you put bulbs in the freezer.
Planning the few weeks between the box and the bed
Picture April. The border you filled on a grey October afternoon comes up in order, the early ones first, then the tall ones behind, and none of it needed anything from you all winter. That spring depends on bulbs that were still firm when they went in.
Our bulbs come in small lots and nobody reorders partway through the season, so once a variety is spoken for it waits until the following autumn. The other deadline is nature’s rather than ours, because cold hard ground in late October and November closes the planting window whether or not you were ready.
The collections we put together for this autumn are grouped by the job they do in the garden.
If you would rather watch than read, Darrell covers Darrell storing flower bulbs so they keep blooming in a short video on our channel.
What three careless weeks cost when you store flower bulbs
Nobody budgets for this. You paid for the bulbs in September, the ground was not ready until late October, and the box sat on top of a warm cupboard in between. Then you plant mould. The loss is not just the pack, it is the bed you planned around it and a spring you spend looking at something else.
It is also a confusing thing to look up. Most fall planting advice is written for people who plant the day the box lands. Search for storage and you are told the fridge, the garage, the basement, the freezer, often on the same page. None of that helps in the house you actually have.
The bulbs are usually going somewhere that matters to more than you. The strip by the front path the neighbours walk past, the bed your mother asks about, the pot the kids helped fill. When it comes up half empty in April, the explaining is the annoying part, more than the money.
We can take one variable out of it. Darrell opens the boxes himself when they land and goes through the packs by hand, after more than 25 years of hands on gardening and landscaping, so what reaches you is firm rather than borderline. If you are unsure about a bulb, bring it into Kitsilano and somebody will squeeze it with you.
Store flower bulbs the way this page describes and firm bulbs go into the ground on planting day. Store flower bulbs on a guess and you can lose the box before you get outside.
Frequently asked questions
Can I store flower bulbs in the fridge?
Only if you have a reason, and only away from fruit. A fridge runs colder than a resting bulb needs and the crisper drawer often sits beside apples, whose ethylene gas kills the flower bud inside the bulb. In most of Canada the winter ground does the chilling for free, so a cool dark cupboard is the better answer.
What happens if bulbs get damp in storage?
Damp plus still air equals mould, and mould that reaches the basal plate at the bottom of the bulb finishes it. Tip the bulbs out onto newspaper, let them dry in a breezy room for a day, discard anything soft, and repack in mesh or paper. Bulbs that are only surface mouldy will usually still grow.
Should I store bulbs and seed garlic together?
You can, as long as the room suits both, which means cool, dark, dry and ventilated. Keep them in separate labelled bags rather than one bin, because you will plant them at different moments in the autumn and you do not want to be sorting cloves out of tulips by lamplight in late October.
My bulbs have started sprouting in the bag. Are they ruined?
Not ruined, just impatient. A short pale shoot means the storage spot was too warm or too bright. Plant them as soon as you can get into the ground, keep the shoot pointing up, and set them at the normal depth. They will usually flower, sometimes a little later than their neighbours.
Come and see us in Kitsilano
DH Garden Centre
3742 West 10th Avenue, Vancouver, BC V6R 2G4
Open daily, 11:00 to 18:30
604-929-7335
If you are in Kitsilano and you are not sure whether a bulb in your bag is still worth planting, bring it in and Darrell will squeeze it and tell you straight. He opens every box himself when it lands, after more than twenty five years on this coast.
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Have a plant question? Bring it to the counter.
DH Garden Centre is at 3742 West 10th Avenue in Kitsilano, Vancouver, open 11:00 to 6:30 every day. Bring the plant, or a photo of the spot you want to fill, and we will look at it with you. If you buy a pot here we repot the plant at the counter, soil included up to 5 litres.
