Time to tell you how the refrigerated tulips did. Well, they came out of the fridge looking very scary indeed!!! Limp little things that looked terrible but mould on only a very few (phew!). I (more or less) followed the advice of Linda Beutler in
Garden to vase: growing and using your own cut flowers who suggests submerging in warm water, recutting stems etc and was amazed by the transformation. Incredible. Having said that, I would NOT do it again unless I really had too: way too stressful and those I kept did not age in the way a tulip normally does, never reaching that fully open stage. Unsurprising, maybe, considering all they'd been subjected to.