Why there’ll be less colour next spring

A SHORTAGE of daffodil and tulip bulbs means next spring will be less colourful than usual.

Bulb growers are warning that ‘a perfect storm’ of bad conditions has hit supplies.

The very dry spring this year, coupled with the chilly ‘Beast from the East’ in March, means bulbs are smaller than normal and in short supply.

The warning comes as Britain’s gardeners plant bulbs between October and December. Boston Bulbs, one of the UK’s biggest suppliers, said the little rain that fell in spring ‘went straight down the drain’ and ‘the soil remained cracked, hard and dry’.

In a statement to customers, the company warned: ‘There are going to be immense shortages of most types of bulbs, as a lot of products haven’t produced the levels of crop that was anticipated. In fact, there is as much as 40 per cent shortfall in the overall harvest of bulb varieties.’

For the average gardener, it says, this ‘means there will be limited availability in the latter part of the year. As the biggest market – about 85 per cent - for bulbs is for cut flowers, growers will buy up stocks they need, making fewer bulbs available for gardeners.

Boston Bulbs, based in Spalding, Lincolnshire, added: ‘Early bulbs in particular, such as daffodils, are being most affected by this. Later flowering varieties have actually developed a reasonable amount of larger size bulbs as the weather conditions improved for growing bulbs later in the year.

‘But limited availability is bound to mean price increases, so we advise that people get their orders in early so as not to be disappointed.’

Adam Taylor, of Taylor’s Bulbs, in Holbeach, Lincolnshire, told Amateur Gardening: ‘The growing year has not been the best. It isn’t the long, hot summer that has caused the problems, though that is fresh in people’s minds, but the Beast from the East.

‘It has been the perfect storm of bad growing conditions for the British bulb industry because the stock is in the ground for two years and we have had two difficult years.’

Gary Huggins, managing director of Taylor’s bulbs, said that, instead of 240,000 tons of narcissi in the warehouses, it has only 70,000 tons.

‘Perfect storm’