Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Few daffodil blooms this year

A daffodil is the kind of flower that tolerates a wide variety of conditions and still puts out cheery blooms year after year after year.  However, something is amiss with my daffodils this year, and the blooms are few.  I'm wondering if the hailstorm last April damaged the foliage that would ordinarily have sent energy down to the bulbs.  The Daffodil Society has a list of things that could be wrong, and I'm thinking last year's hailstorm is the most likely culprit.  Some are overcrowded, but even the ones that are not have such sparse blooms I'm ruling that out as the main cause.  Perhaps last year's spring ended with an early heat wave or a dry spell.  I don't remember that in particular, but that seems plausible.  I'm planning to throw a little compost and high phosphate fertilizer on them.  We'll see how they do next year. 
I'm just a little concerned that I did the wrong thing by putting a few wood ashes around them last year.  The optimum pH for daffodils is 6.0 to 6.5.  I felt reasonably sure the pH was lower than that.  With the amount of moss growing in the area, I suspect it still is lower than that.
Anyway, I'm asking myself how brown my thumb is to not be able to grow daffodils.
This is a jonquil my sister gave me.  It has a nice fragrance.  You can see how few blooms compared to 2 years ago.

 
 
 

 

1 comment:

  1. The daffodil is a 'Cheer-u-up' happy flower. Appears to be a tough dude as you say. On our walks a week or so ago, they seemed to thrive anywhere!
    The best from ADvance!

    ReplyDelete