Daffodil bulbs gone blind

[missmoffatt2705]

About 2 years go, in the autumn, I planted lots of daffodil bulbs. The following spring, the bulbs flowered. However last spring, although there were green leaves, there was no flower. It looks like the same thing will happen this year as I can't see any buds. Do I need to dig the bulbs up and plant them deeper or were they a duff bunch of bulbs and need digging out and chucking away? How can I prevent this happening in the future?

[sieglinde]

Did you feed them last year?

They like bonemeal.

Did you cut the leaves down last year? You have to leave them on.

Are they waterlogged?

There are also bug things...

The bulbs are unlikely to be duff if they flowered last year. When did they flower? Some later ones are still producing their buds, so don't despair yet.

[bumperella]

Most likely to be....
Lack of light
Lack of food
Chopping foliage down too early
Planted too close together
Lack of water - but then if they're kept too wet over the summer they're more likely to rot.


The bulb has everything in it to produce the leaves, roots and flower for the following year. Once it's up (ie leaves etc) then it needs to build up enough to have the strength to flower the following year. So you need to feed them up to get the best show of flowrs from them next year. So keep the leaves until they go yellow and clearly dead, and feed them when the leaves are still up.