Planting Daffodils in Show Beds
Show Beds
There's no requirement for show beds, but if you want to show your flowers, you should consider maintaining dedicated show beds that are only planted with show daffodils. It makes the work easier, and it helps with the maintenance of the bulbs, and the collection of the flowers to put into the show. Try it. You'll like it.
A show bed as defined for our use here in this article are those garden beds that are maintained as single purpose beds and not used for other flowers or vegetables. Just daffodils. I usually keep these beds weed free, however, a little "green" mulch "visitors" in the form of grass and weeds in the middle of summer both provides shade, and uses up moisture in the ground. At the end of August, I spray with round-up and before the fall is over, all the visiting dead plants and grass are removed.
Bulb Planting
Back to bulb planting. I take all my bulbs out to the bed to be planted, and lay them out in alphabetical order, as in the picture above. I determine that all the bulbs to be planted are present, based on my computer made list. Sometimes bulbs on the list are not to be planted, based on my personal desires, and will be deleted from the list, as well as new bulbs can be added. A bulb to be added or deleted from this list is marked in pen for it's exact alphabetical order, and later updated on the computer.
My show beds are planted in short rows of seven of each variety. Bulbs excess to the seven needed for planting are usually given away. However, if an excess bulb is a "good one" I plant it in another bed segment that I keep for single and odd numbers of bulbs. Each bed is planted alphabetically in rows of seven bulbs per variety across the width of the bed. However, like the daffodil garden depicted in the pictures on this page, this garden has three beds, and about 50 rows of seven across in each bed.
Why alphabetically and why seven bulbs? First alphabetically; I was always a person with order in my life and it carries over to my gardening techniques. It makes sense to me and helps with labeling and other functions of maintaining control of my planting. It is also very useful during the bloom period as it is most unlikely that varieties will be miss labled as they can be if you plant all your white, or all your yellow daffodils, etc., together in the same bed. As you know, many daffodils look alike, but you can bet that some keen-eyed judge will know the difference. So, alphabetically, it is very unlikely that you will have, for example, two different and confusing white daffodils growing next to each other.
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