Feeding Daffodils

by Kathleen
(Grand Rapids, MI)

My daffodil blooms lay on the ground

by Tim
(Fredericksburg, VA)

I planted my daffodils several years ago and each year they come up with even more blooms. Great! However, most the flowers, soon as they open, lay on the ground. Is there a way to get them to stand up straight or what am I doing wrong?

Doug says that it depends. Some varieties (the old King Alfred particularly) just lie down on the job because they have weak stems. No cure other than to get the more modern versions (the real King Alfred is no longer available)

So get some better varieties.

Or, sometimes excess feeding will create weakened stems, as will excessive shade.

Bottm line - if your cultural conditions are good, then you have a variety problem.

Potted Daffodils in Rocky Soil

by Charlene
(Medford, OR)

My husband bought me potted already flowered daffodils from Safeway. The florist told him that I can easily move the daffodils into a garden and I found your article on reblooming tulips which you said pretty much applies to reblooming daffodils. I'm a first time gardener and the area that I would like to plant my daffodils in has sandy soil full of pebbles and rocks. It also has dead plants that previous renters had planted, which I have tried my best to uproot, but the soil now has bits of roots scattered throughout. What do I need to do to the soil to help the daffodils thrive?

Doug says not much if anything. Plant them out after all danger of frost and let them go. Easy gardening. They should bloom in spring 2011

After separation daffodils do not bloom.

by Maggi
(Calpine, CA)

I separated my bulbs two years ago, after they were in the same area for five years, and they do not bloom, even though I waited and let them turn yellow and I feed them, what could be the trouble?

Doug says that if you're giving them enough sunshine - then you're just going to have to wait for them to make up their mind that they're big enough. :-) Sometimes stubborn plants just doesn't do quite what we think they should do on our timelines. :-)

daffodill bulbs sprouted early in the fall

by Andrea
(London Ontario, Canada)

I planted daffodil bulbs last fall & during an unseasonably warm November the tips began to emerge about an inch above the soil. Now it's May & although there is lots of foliage (with brown damaged tips) they haven't produced any flowers. Is all hope lost for this season? Are they still capable of blooming? And is it safe to transplant them to a different spot?

Doug says: the bulbs are still alive so that's the good news. You planted too early so next year plant a little later.

Is it too late for flowers? No. Still a possibility although if the buds came out of the bulbs last fall (from a really early planting) then they might be frozen off and you won't see them this year.

Safe to transplant them? I wouldn't. You will really stunt them/kill 'em if you move them if they're still trying to give you flowers. After flowering is 2nd best time to move and first best is after the leaves go yellow and start to die down.

Good luck with the blooms coming.

cats and daffodils

can these flowers harm my 2 cats in anyway?

Doug says your cats won't eat them - they're bitter. But yes, daffodils are quite poisonous but animals may "nibble" once but generally don't go further than that because of the taste.

When to Plant Wild Daffodils

by Linda Haynes
(Rockford, Illinois)

hi when should i plant my 100 bulb wild daffodils in zone 5? and will they bloom the first season?


Doug says that daffodils are usually planted 6 weeks before final freezeup in your area. So look for the end of October to plant bulbs. Doesn't matter whether they are fancy hybrids or species for naturalizing

continued blooming of daffs indoors?

i bought some daffs at my local grocery store, potted already and about 6 - 7 inches tall.
well they grew and finnally bloomed a pretty soft yellow.
the thing is, i'd like to keep them indoors.
will they bloom again? (some sites said they wouldn't.)
what kind of care do they require? (believe me, nothing is to hard, we grow juniper bonsai indoors complete with cold room for dormancy!)
do you know of anybody else who has done this?
oh, and they are not the paper-whites I've read so much about ,lol.
thanks for your help in advance.

Doug says the suggestions for getting potted daffodils to rebloom are much the same for getting potted tulips to rebloom. I wrote an article on my blog about this a few weeks ago. I hope it helps.

Cutting back daffodils

by Marlene Meyer
(Missouri--USA)

If the daffodils are cut down to one inch in May, will they bloom again next Spring?

Doug says they will if the leaves were left alone long enough to replenish the energy in the bulbs. If the leaves were not given enough time to produce energy - then no, they will not bloom.

moving daffodils to a different spot in spring

by Lee
(Manchester. England UK)

Hi, I would like to move my tulip and daffodil bulbs to a different part of my garden, can this be done in May?
Thanks; Lee.

Doug says you can move the bulbs as soon as they finish blooming but it is better to wait until the leaves start to yellow. You may lose a few in an early post-flowering move but it can be done if done carefully.

making daffodills bloom in late april

by genene
(winder ga usa)

how do i put off the blooming of my bulbs i have not planted yet i live in zone 7

Doug says - if I understand you correctly, you haven't planted them. And you want to know how to stop them from blooming until Late April.

The real answer is to keep them cool. That will stop them from growing. Plant them and keep them too cold to bloom. Tough to do in Georgia

If you are growing them in the ground - no trick that I know of is going to make that happen.

If you're growing them in containers, then they should be planted in so they can develop roots and then be kept cold. If you let them sit on a shelf, the likelihood is that they'll dry out and die.

So other than a rather large cooler to hold the pots, (which is what commercial growers do) I have no suggestions for you that will work for you. Sorry

My tee tee daffodils dont stand up straight ??

by Mary M
(Melbourne Australia)

I planted some tee tee daffodils for my mother in law as she lost her only daughter unexpectedly this year. The daffodils are in flower but wont stand up straight. I wonder why. The weather is cold. Any ideas ??

Doug says that first of all he has no idea what a tee tee daffodil is - and the Net didn't seem to help me out too much. And I'm not sure what "stand up straight" means. Daffodil flowers curve at the neck and some varieties actually have their flowers pointing downwards. So if you mean why are the flowers not standing straight up or pointing outwards, it might very well be the variety.

If the entire plant or stems are laying on the ground, then the only times I've seen this are either weather related (smashed to the ground by storms) or sometime high nitrogen fertilizer that push the plant way too fast and you wind up with soft growth that falls over. Way too much shade, overwatering and over feeding will cause this in combination.

Most bulb diseases simply kill the bulb or stop flowering.

Sorry I can't be of more help.

Cutting dead blooms of daffadills

by Judy
(Michigan)

When do I cut the daffadill dead blooms off and cut back the folliage?

Doug says that the flower was held up on a stem - slide your hand carefully down the stem as far as you can do without crushing leaves. You cut off this flower stem as close to the ground as you can without cutting off leaves. That's it. That simple.

And you do this when the flowers fade.

The foliage gets cut back and off when it goes yellow.

How to store daffodil bulbs

by Jane Dart
(Stavanger, Norway)

I would like to know how best to store daffodil bulbs. The daffodils were in my tubs. I have now taken them out and planted summer flowers. There is no room to leave the daffodils in the tubs as well. How do i keep them such that they will be happy when i re plant them after the summer plants are over? many thanks.

Doug says cool and dry. That should do it assuming the leaves had yellowed down so the bulbs were fully replenished with energy and formed a flower bud for next year.

when do daffodils grow?

by Nevaeh
(Virginia)

When do daffodils grow and where are they usually found growing?

Doug says that daffodils are a spring blooming perennial - but the leaves grow for the next two to three months in order to replenish the bulbs to produce flowers the following year.

Normally, we grow them in full sun to light shade.

seed daffodils

by Jonathan
(South Carolina, USA)

When starting daffodils from seed, after the cold period in the fridge, should the seeds be planted in something that gives them nutrition? I've always heard to much nitrogen is bad for bulbs.

Doug says that while bulbs in nature don't require a lot of feeding, it is recommended that you feed seedlings with 1/4 to 1/2 strength fertilizer to keep them growing along. You'll get a quicker seedling and one that will grow up so you can tranplant it into the garden where it will be quite happy with a shovel of compost a year.

Fertilizing Daffodils

by M. Edgar
(Buena Park, California USA)

I have about 30 daffodils coming up in my morning sun front garden. The soil here is good and I added a bit of composted manure last summer. Do I need another fertilizer? Is fish emulsion OK on daffodils?

Doug says a shovel or three of compost in the spring is all they'll need. Do they need it every year? Doug's first rule of gardening says you only have to feed your plants if you want leaves, flowers or fruit. Enough said. :-)

Keep daffodil bulbs unplanted through winter

by Charlie Butts
(Norcross(Atlanta), GA)

I have not split my 1200 daffodil bulbs in 12 years. I dug them all up(all I could find), so now I have about 10,000 bulbs!!!!! My question is do I HAVE to replant this fall after keeping them in a cool dark airy place? I mean they won't "KEEP" unplanted from July of this year until fall of NEXT year if stoerd correctly will they?


Doug says that indeed they will not live for the next year and a half in storage. You get to plant them this fall - enjoy. :-)

Daffodil maintenance with no flowering

by Jon
(Pittsburgh, PA)

Our daffodils were all leaves (plentiful) this year. No flowers. Does that mean the leaves were removed too early last year? Should we dig up the bulbs, separate them and replant them? If so should the bulbs be dug up now and replanted in the fall?
Should we do nothing and assume floiwers will appear next spring?

Doug says - there are a ton of articles and questions on this site now about why daffodils or other bulbs don't bloom. Why this happens in your individual garden is a mystery to me because I wasn't there but you've identified several possible causes.

What to do is fairly simple and that's to stop doing whatever it was. :-)

If it were my garden, I'd be leaving the bulbs in one place and letting them grow and develop properly. I'm way too lazy to be digging and storing bulbs given that daffodils do pretty well all by themselves if given half a chance.

Separating daffodils is only necessary if the stand is really old and really crowded (and this condition will reduce flowering) I'd be tempted to do this in the fall or after the plants have died down to the ground. But then replant right away in the fall but store for the summer if you dig in the spring. Frankly, I've had clumps of daffodils flower pretty regularly for over 20 years with no major loss of flowering (but then again, maybe some folks like to feed them a whole bunch more than I ever did)

Hope that helps a little.

Do Daffodils Grow Wild?

by Jonni
(Wickes, AR, USA)

Do Daffodils grow wild?

Doug says of course they grow wild... somewhere :-)

If you're asking if you can naturalize them - will they grow in your climate naturally, then the answer is that if you can grow them in your garden, you can grow them in a field or let them grow naturally anywhere. They'll slowly spread and the clumps will become quite large.

The question though is whether you can grow them successfully in your garden - in your climate.

Daffodils cut too soon

I made the mistake of cutting my daffodils to the ground after they bloomed last year. Therefore I only got two blooms. If I let them go until the leaves yellow, will there be more blooms next year?

Doug says that if cutting them back was the only problem in growing (lots of sun, etc) then yes, leaving the leaves alone to go yellow this year should give you blooms next spring.

Isn't it interesting how we *all* learn the hard way sometimes. :-)

reblooming daffodils

by Suzanne
(Phoenix, AZ)

Will my daffodil plant flower again if I cut off the old blossoms and how do I cut them off?

Doug says that you only get one bloom per year on a daffodil. So if it's bloomed, that's it for this year. You cut off the blooms by snipping the stem the flower was on - as far down the stem as you can reach with your scissors. In other words, snip off as much of that stem as you can.

Growing them for another year in AZ is a problem because you don't have real winter. The bulb requires 14 weeks of very cold weather to set another flower bud.

So unless you're a berserker gardener who wants to grow plants in your refrigerator for the entire winter, I'd suggest you compost this one and get some pre-chilled bulbs next spring again.

Daffodil Plant Being Eaten

by Betty Jean
(Trego, WI)

As my daffodils are coming up some of the leaves are being eaten down to the ground. I had 2 plants in full bloom for a week and this morning they were also eaten down to the ground! Flower and all. What can this be? We live in northern WI., and have deer, squirrels, very few rabbits and bear. I thought the plants were poisonous.

Doug says you either have starving creatures or some very sick ones right about now. I'm betting on deer although rabbits could be a possibility. Check for scat-dropping or tracks in freshly cultivated ground to get the answer.

Daffodils leaf but there is no bloom here in Atlanta

by carolyn
(Atlanta, GA)

Why do some daffodil bulbs bloom and others do not. Thes bulbs were all planted at the same time (50 bulbs) and only three have shown flowers. I live in Atlanta...spring has sprung but not my daffodils !

Doug says that there are several reasons. The primary ones for more northerly gardeners are written here in this article

Southern gardeners have another problem. And that is not enough cold weather. You need a mininum of 12-16 weeks (depending on bulb and variety) of cold soil temperatures (very low 40's) for the bulb to form a bud. So if your winter isn't cold enough for long enough, the bud doesn't form and you don't get flowers. A month of "winter" won't cut it to induce flowering.

The first year bulbs were likely cold treated so they'd flower for you (a common thing with bulbs sold in the South) the first year. After that, you're on your own with your own winter temperatures.

Lots of leaves and no flowers in the South is a sign of warm winters and not enough cold. Nothing you can do outdoors for this problem.

What are the easiest Daffodils to grow?

by M. Jackson
(Roseburg, Oregon USA)

What are the easiest Daffodils to grow... A friend lives near Mt Hood Oregon and the weather is often cooler and he wants to know what kind of daffodils would be the most easily adapted to this climate.


Doug says they're all easy. Anything you can find in a garden center is going to grow very, very well out there.

Daffodil transplanting and leaf management- whipper snipper?

by Willy
(WV)

I have access to possibly thousands of daffodil bulbs to transplant and have studied all on these pages. I have seen gardeners fold over plants and wrap around rubber bands. I thought these were on daffodils (maybe tulips). and also I wondered about why to cut the stem of the daffodil at all. Does it need to be done by hand or could someone just use a weedeater on a hillside of dead daffodils? Sorry if these seem like goofy questions.


Doug says. If you have thousands to pick from and no time problems, I'd do it as soon as the leaves yellow and whither. The bulb is resting/dormant and moving it will be easiest. And you can find the bulbs. If you let it go till fall, the foliage may have disappeared and you won't know where the bulbs are. Doing it during or prior to bloom is possible but not a desired timing.

Cutting back the stems. Normally gardeners do this to stop the plant from setting seed and to neaten up the garden. The belief is that cutting off the flower stem makes the bulb itself healthier. I have no idea if this is true (from research) but it sounds good.

Rubber bands. Gardeners who want to get the bulb leaves out of the way rubber band or tie them up so they can plant annuals in the space formerly occupied by the leaves. This only reduces the photosynthesis ability (energy producing) of the leaves. It's a lot of work from my point of view and with a large naturalized bulb garden, way too much work. Forget it.

Cutting back with a whipper snipper? Hmm, if the bulbs were naturalized, I wouldn't bother doing it at all. I'd leave them to develop seeds and hopefully produce a few new plants along the way. In a garden, I think you're going to find the whipper snipper is too big a tool and you're going to have a lot of leaf damage along with the stem cutbacks. Remember you want healthy leaves to replenish the bulbs. So forget the whipper snipper in the garden.

Hope that helps. And no question is a dumb one if you really don't know.

daffodils not blooming

by Thelma
(United Kingdom)

Please can you tell me why all my Daffodils have come up blind and will they flower next year? Thank you so much Kind regards Thelma

Doug says you should check this article on the reasons bulbs don't bloom.

Not knowing how you are growing your bulbs, I'm not able to tell you what to do about your problem. The article pretty much hits all the highlights though. Good luck.