Depends what product you use - if you use a granular composition like Growmore, one application because it take six weeks to break down, if you use a liquid feed, as often as it says on the bottle, but the time to feed bulbs is whilst the leaves are present and a healthy green, doesn't matter if they're in flower when you do it.

Bulba uses half strength tomato food on all the bulbs in pots for around six weeks. He starts just as the flower is going over. As for the tulips in the ground, or any other bulbs for that matter, we don't feed - it would take far too long going round them all!

Thankyou Bamboo and MG. I've always waited until the flowers are gone before I feed them so it's good to know that I can do it whilst still in flower. I use tomato food and try to feed all bulbs, even in the ground, but you probably have a bigger garden MG. Last year, i didn't feed at all and the bulbs came up ok. Not gonna risk it again though.

There are several thousand bulbs in our garden Merlin so feeding them is not something we've ever considered and they come up fine every year.

I had to feel an area of what must now be hundreds of daffodils on a pretty inaccessible steep bank now we are older, and I bought one of those attachments you put on a hose with the concentrated fertilizer in it. You can then spray at the correct concentration. It made a huge difference to the flowering the following year.

Stera, looking round our garden just now I can promise you all the bulbs flower fantastically every year. Possibly because we incorporate so much organic matter into the soil.

That's great but these daffs suddenly began to do poorly. I decided in the end it was probably due to a long dry spell just at the point the bulbs should have been feeding up for the following year. They are in grass and ferns on a very steep bank which is very free draining. This long dry spell we've just had might affect them in the same way next year but its too late to feed them now as they are pretty well died back now.

Could well be the lack of rain Stera and the free draining soil.