2 Daft Questions About Daffs

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1. I am planting bulbs late. I meant to do it earlier but it was either too wet or too cold or the soil needed going over and replenishing. I know it's late. Now, what happens? If they are planted late, do they come up? Or do they just think, right, I've missed my slot, I'll sit it out and wait for the next bus to come along in a year's time? How do they know? What's to stop them coming up in, say, May? Or June?

It's odd, because snowdrops are in their prime in my garden now. But it's March, and I'd swear they normally get going second week of January or thereabouts. The seasons are all over the place at the moment.

Or do the daffs, being denied their chance, just rot in the ground?

This leads to my second, madder point.

2. I cleared a border full of raggedy bushes with white berries at some time of year (no idea what the bush is) - now going back half a century, this border used to have lots of King Alfred daffodils along it before it got overrun with the bushes. The daffodils then mostly vanished. However, digging up the earth I happened upon a lot of bulbs, surely daffodil bulbs. But, how can this be? If they didn't get a chance to get going in decades, surely they can't have just resided in the earth all that time? Surely they would rot in the ground or just decay?

Oh, there's another question, this time about tulips. I planted these in my front garden among blue grape hyacinths a few years back, it gets intense sun so it wasn't a great idea as they just wilted and got knackered quickly. Last year, they didn't come through at all. Where the hell did they go? Did they just give up the ghost? I don't think anyone would have dug them up.

Any suggestions?

Daffodils will come up but maybe not flower

Are the white berries Snowberry/Symphoricarpos?

Are you sure the bulbs you dug were daffodils?

Tulips are known to be short live, probably rotted over winter

Yes on the tulip front I can only ever get mine to last two or three years before I need to plant more.

Well, that's interesting! Tulips are a bunch of shirkers, didn't know that!

Yes, the bushes are ghost berry or what have you. I didn't know that, thanks!

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphoricarpos

Though what they're doing in Surrey when they're native to California etc I don't know. Maybe my idea to plant a Californian lilac amongst them is the right fit? It says they grown near river banks and there's a stream at the end of the garden, also acc to another thread an underground spring or 'earth borne' which is very odd, you only see it when you dig up all the clay earth.
The bushes don't have any greenery let alone white berries on them now.

I think what I dug up were daff bulbs, I will be planting them today or tomorrow. Nothing grew there before that is in the last few decades because these bushes just spread out and took over.

Tulips are a bunch of shirkers That’s unfair! While a lot of daffodil species are UK or Europe, most tulips are Middle East. And we’re taking them from all that warmth and sunshine into the grey mizzle of an English winter. Poor things are homesick!

Though what they're doing in Surrey when they're native to California etc I don't know. An awful lot of our garden plants are the native plants of somewhere else. That’s what all the big plant collector expeditions in Victorian times were about.

If a plant just has two “Latin” names, then it’s a wild species from somewhere. Two “Latin “ names followed by “var” or just a name in quotes mean that it’s the result of either careful propagation from an extra good specimen, or of cross breeding of good forms. If the two “Latin” names have a “x” between them, then it’s a hybrid of two species.

Symphoricarpus has been grown in the UK for at least 200 years, and has now escaped and is naturalised in the wild. it’s quiteinvasive as you have found.

I find that my daffs come up in the garden every year, as do the hyacinths, sometimes the tuulips, I don't replant any of them, they spread nicely, I like the naturalised look anyway. Just leave them if they come up this year it's a bonus if not wait for next year. I have got quite a dry garden with no clay. Maybe it's different in wetter conditions.

I only remove the bulbs after flowering (keeping the leaves) from the pots on the terrace they are kept in the dark and dry till the autumn. it works well.

Pah! I don't go to the Netherlands for a sun tan.

But newspaper The Netherlands have the hugest effing greenhouses with flowers probably in the world. They hate daffs because they're too cheap ( I'm in Fr. and i reallly miss the cut daffs here, that's why the florists don't sell them). They, of course, love tulips! The weirder, more hybrid, the better.

And they don’t expect them to live outside winter after winter after winter

Exactly Mere

I've had daffs which were shaded out by bigger, stronger plants, which seemed to have died. A decade later, I cleared the rosa rugosa and the next year, the daffodils grew and flowered. I think they still keep going in the same way as over the late summer/autumn/early winter and can last like that for a long time if not disturbed. Some long lost and forgotten alchemilla mollis also cropped up, which I had planted 20 years before.

WRT the unplanted bulbs, if you leave them without planting then they will probably die and rot. If you plant them, then they might die, they might grow roots but not leaves until next year, or they might flower. The only way to find out is to plant them. You've bought them already, so there's nothing to lose by giving it a good go.

Thanks for all these answers! I will try to plant some more now but light snow today in the South East!

Just updating, I did plant some more daffodils about a week after that post and the tips are coming through now so they are actually 'functioning'! Some were newly bought since autumn, others had been dug up from doing over the border and had been lying in the garage since the summer.

These 'new' daffs are a bit behind schedule but frankly so is spring this year.

Thanks for updating us. I like it when there are some later daffs, it helps to bridge the gap between spring and summer a bit!

Two more updates. It seems I have maligned tulips as suddenly - in the space of three days - they just seem to have shot up among the blue grape hyacinths in the front garden. Maybe not totally as many as before but a good number. I think they looked like weeds until they actually flower so that was a pleasant surprise.

However, while the King Alfred daffs have come up and flowered, they seem a bit small and singular. I don't understand why they say, hey, plant them a few inches apart because they don't come up in clumps as they should then. Also, not sure if I've been fobbed off with those mini daffodils you get or whether they just aren't coming up much this year because I planted them late.

My dwarf daffs are always later than the bigger ones. So maybe all is not lost!
The reason for planting the King Alfreds so far apart is that the bulbs multiply fairly quickly, and in a couple of years you will have nice clumps. Otherwise, you would have to lift and divide them much sooner.

Okay, but these aren't meant to be dwarf daffs - is that a PC term these days?! They don't seem very large anyway.

My dwarf daffs are always later than the bigger ones Time of flowering is determined by variety not by size. There are many early flowering small varieties and late flowering large ones, right until May

They might be blind, but they might just be a later variety. Planting later probably just meant that they didn't have enough growing time, so the ones that have flowered were smaller than they otherwise would have been (they will almost certainly be better next year and will soon form lovely clumps). The others might flower yet, and might be fine next year, or may need replanting. How careful were you about the planting depth? Daffs can be a bit picky about that.

Hi, I think I planted them deep enough - six inches or so - I followed the YouTube videos! They don't quite look how I imagined them either! Yes, they are all yellow. But they seem perky and trumpet-like, like those dancing plastic flowers you see in little shops in Carnaby Street. I was looking for daffs that slightly droop at the heads, something a bit more Wordsworthian.

I also late planted some bluebells - they seem to be keeping a low profile too in the sense that they haven't really produced stems. This too is not their fault, I hasten to add.

No use to you now, but if you want a more natural look, have a look at daffodil WP Milner. It's lovely.

@MereDintofPandiculation if you're actually one of the Gardeners World presenters could you give us a secret sign or something. Perhaps sneak the word pandiculation in or something!

It would make me happy.

Oh and if you are could you possibly put forward the suggestion that they show old clips from decades past episodes. I think it would be really interesting to see them (more so than endless viewers gardens..)

I have often wondered.. I'll be waiting for a secret sign too😉

If you want Wordsworthian daffodils you want the wild ones which I think are Narcissus pseudonarcissus. Really delicate and more subtle than the modern domestic ones.