Early Daffodil Beds

Preparing an early daffodil bed became essential after this spring of the year 2000 when I didn't have flowers early enough to show at my own home daffodil show, but I was cleaning up on the "Blue" ribbons two weeks later. In explanation, local shows are normally staged at a time when the daffodils are in full bloom at that geographical location so that the local members have a chance to exhibit their best flowers.

Much of my philosophy on "early," "mid-season" and "late" daffodil beds are discussed in my article published a few weeks ago, called Preparing Daffodil Beds for Fall Planting. If you didn't read that article, or my article from last week, I'd recommend you read both before reading this weeks'. Last weeks article can be reached at Rebuilding My Daffodil Beds.

Digging In The Dirt

Any reader that has been following my articles for the last month will know, I've been on a "dirt" binge. I mean, all my articles for the last month has been devoted to building beds for fall daffodil bulb planting, or just the general basics of daffodils. I had a friend send me an email that stated, "Do you raise daffodils, or are you just into making daffodil bulb gardens?" The statement was intended to be comical, with the emphasis as this friend stated, "you spend more time preparing the soil than anyone I know." Sorry, I grew up in a cotton farming area of zone 7. On that farm in was drilled into me in a desperate sort of manner, that to make a profit we had to have well prepared soil that would raise from a bale to a bale and half of cotton per acre, or we'd go broke. We did it and went broke anyway.

After leaving home, I have carried that furry of bed building with me for 40 years now, and my gardens love every minute of it.

The Bed

Last week I talked about making a raised bed that was completely framed. On this early bed, I used the same idea, but used a "cut" in a hill to form one side, and half of two more sides of the bed. After the area was flat from the back cut to the front slope, I brought in a mixture of the "mushroom soil" from last weeks article and "leaf-gro", which is top soil with leave mold mixed into it and allowed to compost.

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