Thank you both so much!
Terri, I finally gave up trying to find pots that were the colors I wanted as well as affordable, and ended up painting all of them. Clay pots have remained looking good for 3 years now. The plastic pots have started peeling, but weathered much better than I anticipated. I started a thread in the container forum telling about the method I used, I'll find it if you think you'd be interested.
Most specie tulips are native to mountainous regions with sharply drained, gravelly soil that is very lean. Their water needs are mostly met by melting snow. During their dormant period in summer they are acclimated to a dry baking. Modern hybrids still prefer treatment that mimics those conditions, which are not very conducive to the growth of most other garden plants. I dig the bulbs after flowering (and when the foliage is yellowing), allow them to air dry, and then slough off the dry foliage and dirt. This is when I break the clusters of bulbs apart and keep only the largest bulbs. I put those in mesh bags and hang them upstairs where we don't use air conditioning. A garage works well too. Keeping them bone dry in summer seems to be key. So far I've only tested this method on Darwin hybrids and late singles, but all were successful and even resulted in significant increase! For 100 bulbs originally planted, I harvested 130-150 blooming sized bulbs.
Ollioules, while marketed as a Darwin hybrid because it shares similar traits in bloom size and time, is actually a Triumph tulip, so it may not return as well as the others. For years they plopped it in that division because it offered a pink option to the group, and even though now there are some pink Darwin hybrids nowadays, Ollioules is more cool pink (rather than the warm salmon pink of Pink Impression and other pinks).
