Daffodils around
By Felder Rushing
Have patience; when it comes to digging daffodils, waiting two months can save two years.
I suppose that garden experts should appear impartial and feign adoration for all things flowery, but my all-time favorites, hands down, are cheery, deer-proof daffodils. I savor the three dozen or so kinds in my Jackson garden, mostly from my American Daffodil Society great-grandmother’s old Delta garden. They do so well that, for posterity’s sake, every spring I move a few, with names like Erlicheer, Carlton, Jonquil, Grand Primo, Ice Follies, Thalia, February Gold, Campernelle, and others, to an old cemetery just north of the State Capitol for visitors to enjoy for generations to come.
And by the way, call them what you want, even buttercups, but all daffodils, including trumpet, paperwhites (which smell like cat urine to some folks), doubles, and jonquils with their thin, quill-like leaves, are officially Narcissus. In the 1600s the flowers called asphodel in English gradually got muddled into ‘affodele which became daffadilly and now just daffodil.
There are many hundreds of great cultivars, but most do not do well in Mississippi. To get the most out of them, when it comes to choosing new ones for my garden, I carefully select just those I believe will flower dependably for decades. I am aware that the kinds I photographed last March naturalized in an old cemetery in upstate New York would quickly end up just non-flowering clumps of greenery down here. Sad fact, but like tulips and true snowdrops, the original King Alfred and many of the other daffodils sold by the bagful in garden centers are mostly one-shot wonders in our mild winters and short springs.
Here’s the rub: Daffodils need at least five or six weeks after normal flowering time to grow new bulbs and form flower buds; if they get dug or cut down (or braided) before then, they will usually skip a year flowering. This is why, no matter how tempting to dig some of those I see blooming in abandoned home sites and along roadsides, I usually take just a photo or small bouquet.
When I come across some in need of rescuing, or when friends offer me some of theirs, I always mark their location and go back later when they have died down or at least turned yellow and flopped over before digging and dividing; as I mentioned at the top of this article, it’s better to wait six weeks to dig, than two years to bloom again.
If you simply must dig some while in flower, get the entire clumps without dividing into individual bulbs, to avoid disturbing the roots; either plant the clumps as is, or set them out where they can get sunshine and water until they do die down in a few weeks. Then go for it.
However, if you don’t have easy access to heirloom kinds growing all around, there are over three dozen I know of that you can order online which will sprout faithfully and flower for decades, even on the coast where few do well. I have a free, emailable list of these very dependable kinds, including those we see all over the place year after year, even spreading and naturalizing. Go to felderrushing.blog and click the “email me” link and I’ll send it right along.
Meanwhile if you come across some abandoned ones you simply can’t resist and have permission to dig (NOT the Jackson cemetery please - remember, Santa Claus is watching), mark the bulb location, cut a bouquet to take home for instant gratification, and go back later to rescue the bulbs.
Felder Rushing is a Mississippi author, columnist, and host of the “Gestalt Gardener” on MPB Think Radio. Visit his blog at felderrushing.blog. Email gardening questions to rushingfelder@yahoo.com.
