Tuesday 16 February 2016

It's Daffodil time again

Despite our crazy ("unsettled") weather these past several months, the Daffodils have still remembered to flower at approximately the right time - although many of them were very early this year.

One of my favourite types is "Soleil d'Or" with its multiple-headed stems bearing two-tone flowers:


The little white tips on the yellow petals are very characteristic of this variety.


This is another variety very popular in the UK - "Tête à Tête":


I have little clumps of them growing in several places round my garden. Their diminutive size makes them ideal for small gardens - as well as less vulnerable to windy weather!


I also have some in pots, so that they are portable. Here is one pot outside our front door, attempting to distract attention away from a rather unsightly drainpipe.


The sunken pot arrangement means that I can easily replace the plant in the smaller pot when it has finished flowering. One or two of the pots have been brought indoors at flowering time too, as an alternative to buying a bunch of cut flowers. They look nice this way, but they don't last long. The sudden exposure to much warmer conditions causes them to go over much more quickly.

My Iris Reticulata have been notable by their absence this year. They only seem to last a year or two, unlike Daffodils which come back year after year. I didn't plant any new Irises last year, and very few have come up. This is one of them:


How are your bulbs doing this year?

6 comments:

  1. I've just been out photographing our tete a tete. The snowdrops have been in bud for ages but don't seem to want to fully open

    ReplyDelete
  2. Bulbs are buried in the snow here. It will be a couple of months before we have blooms. I do have a hyacinth in a paper bag in the cold vestibule that I will bring in once the shoot is 3 inches tall. That may be the first bloom I get here.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I grow any new bulbs I buy in containers but they're then planted out in the garden to fend for themselves so I'm really pleased to see the tete a tetes I've put into the ground over the last couple of years flowering away now. The larger daffodils haven't flowered yet but my snowdrops are blooming.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Like Marcia, mine are all under a thick blanket of snow right now - I think it will be at least another month or so before we start seeing any activity, although I do not have any daffodils. Well - that is I DID have some, but the spot where I planted them was dug up by what I believe were squirrels, leaving me with a bunch of large, bulb sized holes.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Loved going through your beautiful photos.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I am about to tell my wonderful blog/fb followers to start planting bulbs for beautiful daffodil blooms come Spring. Thankfully we have plenty of time to get them in the ground. I have a few different ones growing and I love them as they are always one of the first flowers to appear out of the dim and cold winter.

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for taking time to leave me a comment! Please note that Comment Moderation is enabled for older posts.