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Daffodil Bulb Planting Techniques

© Clay Higgins

In general, daffodils bulbs like a rich well drained soil with lots of organic matter mixed in. Based on that principle as a general assumption, daffodil planting and bed preparation go hand-in-hand with Fall Preparation for Planting.

The pictures for this article were taken while planting bulbs along my front walk area. Daffodils and Garden Beds are often the same and therefore both need some time and effort to plan and prepare. The sidewalk to the right in this picture has been taken out, soil added, and more bulbs planted. Circumstance made me spend a lot of time this year in Rebuilding My Daffodil Beds for fall planting. However, after the beds are prepared much effort has to go into planting of the bulbs so that they will, one; give a good display next year, and two: that they will come back year after year as the perennials that they are.

Drainage Planting Techniques

Drainage is critical in planting daffodil bulbs if you want your bulbs to remain healthy and to produce more bulbs.

• Raised Beds

Raised Garden Beds like the one in the picture above can be made by building up the soil (heaping the soil) so that it will be higher than the surrounding lawn area. When I add mulch, after the planting, this garden bed will be from 4 to 6 inches higher than the surrounding lawn. In addition, this area has a natural slope that provides for good drainage.

In general, making raised rows is another technique where the soil is built up so that it is above the level plain of your yard/garden turf. One such technique is to heap up a few inches of soil to improve drainage, such as used in farming cotton or corn that is planted on slightly raised rows, or other "row" crop farming techniques. When using this technique, insure that the furrows between rows allow drainage, or conversely, they do not have areas that have standing water after a rain, or after watering. This picture is how my furrows make a raised bed.

Some build raised beds using various building materials such as wood, stone, railroad crossties, to plastic landscape timbers. The raised beds range from a few inches high to two and three feet high. The large bed in this picture to the right is 16 feet wide. I use the furrow technique to divide the bed into three smaller four feet wide beds with a furrow/walkspace between them. This entire bed is also a raised bed, 24 inches high built with pressure treated bridge timbers.

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