Preparing Daffodil Beds for Fall Planting.

I'd like to leave this subject with one fact, and that is, an exact mixture of organic materials or ingredients is not necessary to measure out like a pharmacist measuring medicine at your local drug store. Daffodils survived in the wild for millions of years without our help, and the organic matter they survived in came naturally from decomposing wood, plant materials and ashes from "wild-fires" that burned their range ever so often. Therefore, close is good enough, like in horseshoes.

Making Beds

My annoyance level reaches explosive levels when talking to many of the gardeners of today that have these exact formulas, like if they were cooking beef burgundy from scratch, when all they are doing is making a bulb garden bed, with dirt. I have been grilled by people that just can't believe I don't use an exact formula measured out in square inches of prepared beds, pounds of peat, and teaspoons of bulb fertilizer to raise my daffodils, and other plants in my garden. They become aghast, and I feel that they are treating me the same as a leaper was treated in the middle ages, as their eyes become big and they back away from me slowly and start looking for that nice jacket without sleeves to fit me with. Yet, year after year I produce superior flowers that I'm always taking to National Shows and winning my share of the competitions.

My method of preparing a bed is rather rough-neck and ragged. To put it simply, I make the bed meet the size of the area, instead of trying to use a formula size bed and change the area to meet that formula size. I'm not fancy about my digging, and the area looks more like a disaster area during the making than that vision in my head of a massive wave of spring daffodils basking in the sunlight that it will become. The spaded earth is uneven and clumped. I unceremoniously rip open the bags of peat, composted manure, lime, and garden gypsum and heap it all together in a pile. From there, I kick it around about with my boots until it's sort of spread out and I'm more kicking the red clay than anything else. After the kicking, I begin the mixing by using my spade in small areas, and my rota-tiller in larger areas. To get a good mix, you have to turn it

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