My Garden, The Last Week of March
This is the picture of the upper bed, which is also the smaller of the two. As it turns out, this is my earliest bed and I'm hoping to get some flowers out of it soon. The daffodil 'Baradoc' 1Y-Y, pictured below is about the only thing I have growing in the upper garden.
Micro-Climates I like to take advantage of micro-climates and by doing so take advantage of "stretching" my daffodils out to bloom for over a month. The micro-climates provide for hot and cold spots, in such way that I can plant a bulb in a hot spot and it will bloom from a week to ten days earlier than a bulb of the same variety planted in a cold spot.
'Baradoc' 1Y-Y.
This is what I have growing in my garden today, March 29th. Not much, huh!
The biggest garden with eight fifty foot long beds was planted in the low area, called a hollow, South of the main house. I planted this garden on the reverse side of an East-West slope that was high on the South side and sloping down in a terraced manner to the North. This should protect the daffodils from the hottest rays of the sun, but provide adequate direct sunlight. This situation also should provide me with the coldest beds and the latest daffodils. Best of all, the slope was on the opposite side of a swales to the South of the house, and allowed me to look down on the daffodil garden from my bedroom window. From there, I have an unobstructed view of the beds, like looking down from the "nose-bleed" seats at sporting events, I can see each bed distinguished separately as it slopes toward me.
The second and smaller garden that was half the size of the larger garden and was placed on a small hill behind and west of the house, running North and South. If my "guesstimates" are correct, this would be my hot spot and provide me with the earliest daffodils.
From the looks of the foliage and the budding process, this guess seems to be about correct, even when you can see as many, if not more daffodils, in the previous picture of the large garden. The reason the daffodils are ahead in the large garden is that those daffodils in bloom were refrigerated last fall, which will cause them to bloom about two weeks earlier than normal.
'Geometrics' (on
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