Why don't all of my daffs have flowers?

[harriethoyle]

We have a paddock at the front of our house and over the last couple of years have planted c.1000 daffodil bulbs there. This year I'd estimate about a third of them have shoots and leaves but no bud or flower. Why is this and can I fix it? A field of green shoots isn't what I was after! 😆

Sounds like the bulbs didn’t save enough nutrients after flowering last year. If you cut them down too early after flowering that can happen.

Are they all planted deeply enough? If you plant too shallow that can affect flowering, too.

Older daffs go "blind", meaning no flowers. Could the third that didn't go be too old?

So this is interesting... the local sheep broke in and ate LOADS of the shoots so they had no opportunity to save nutrients. I bet this is why it is!

Thank you all. I don't think it's a depth thing and we only started the planting mission 3 years ago so I don't think it's age. I bet it's those pesky sheeps! Off to research best naturalising varieties so we get a veritable blanket in a decade or so...

Yes, sheep will do that! Daffs can need dividing to encourage flowering, but the sheep are likely your problem.

Our daffy have started to come up but they're really tiny, which is either a weird mutation or DH didn't read the bulb info properly on the website.

Daffy? DAFFS.

I used to live in a property with really rocky soil (it was near a quarry) the stones apparently gave off some mineral that Daffs dont like - so I had no luck growing them - no matter how often I replaced the bulbs.

My daffs had a year when the bulbs had all got too large, and had split into smaller bulbs too small to flower. But next year the small bulbs had all grown, and were flowering again.

Too much effort to lift and divide when you have hundreds in grass

@DysonBison I bet he accidentally bought the little tete a tete ones...!

My daffs update: too early for shoots but we've successfully kept the sheep out over the last year so I am crossing fingers for more buds this year...

I love the tiny daffs

Good points above, the other things I can think of is that daffs don’t all flower at the same time, some varieties come up later, I have loads of different varieties and lots are only showing leaves at the moment. You may have some daffs that have self seeded, if so the first couple of years you will only get leaves with flowers following in y2/3.