You’d be daff not to...
WITH A LITTLE CARE, DAFFODILS WILL DELIGHT YOU FOR YEARS
THE month of March is a lovely time in the garden as bulbs, perennials, shrubs and trees awake and blossom. Of course, it’s also the time of year when daffodils come into their own. Early varieties have been in bloom for a couple of weeks already with ‘Jetfire,’ ‘Tete a Tete’ and ‘February Gold’ brightening up our verges.
The season will continue on into April with later flowering varieties such as the native wild daffodils (N. pseudonarcissus), the “host of golden daffodils” that the poet William Wordsworth so admired in the Lake District.
However, sometimes they seem to run out of steam and not flower at all.
Also known as blindness, there are a number of reasons this can happen and there are ways to remedy it.
When you plant a good quality bulb it will contain all the reserves necessary to produce leaves and flowers.
But over the years, these bulbs start to reproduce and form clusters of bulbs which in turn can lead to overcrowding.
If a bulb doesn’t have room to grow sufficiently large, it won’t be big enough to produce a flower.
In this case, dig up congested clumps, gently separate the bulbs and replant.
Excessive tidying up by gardeners after flowering can also cause problems.
Daffodils, like other bulbs, need to replenish after blooming and the only time they can do this is during and after flowering because for the remainder of the year they will lie dormant.
The bulb uses this time to build up food reserves in order to produce flower buds for next year, and this energy is harnessed through its foliage – which is why it’s best to leave them to die back naturally.
Tying them up in bunches will also hinder this process.
Once leaves are yellow, it’s fine to remove them – this is usually around six weeks after they have flowered.
Other factors that hinder this process are overly dry conditions and very poor soil.
A good daffodil bulb will usually flower in the first year having sufficient reserves, but thereafter won’t be able to rebuild another flower bud if it suffers adverse conditions.
In these cases, either transplant to more suitable soil or set about improving the soil by adding compost, mulches and feeds.
In dry soils, keep bulbs watered until foliage has finished naturally. Container-grown daffodils will be dependent on you for adequate water and feed – go for high potash to encourage flower production as high nitrogen will just encourage lots of leaves.
A poor showing can also be symptomatic of disease or virus, the most common of which being yellow stripe virus – this exhibits as yellow streaks on the leaves and a generally limp looking plant.
If a bulb does not have enough room to grow, it won’t produce a flower