Our daffodils have gone crazy. To begin with, they are still here.
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Daffodils need cold winters, which we liberally provide, but they don't survive extremely hot summers. As our daffodil numbers slowly decreased over the last bout of drought, culminating in the Black Summer bushfires, we assumed most of our daffs were gone for good. The only ones to appear last spring were the hardiest of the jonquils and a few double yellow daffs. Daffodil bulbs also rot in wet soil, and since January 2020 it has rained at least twice a week, edging into flood.
But I do love daffodils. One of my fondest garden memories is of Judith Wright, glaring at my clumps of daffs glowing all around the garden, and ordering me to cease planting exotics forthwith and stick to natives. She then left with the largest armful of daffodil flowers possible. She, too, loved daffs.
So this year I bought more bulbs, early varieties to cheer up winter, well worth the small price even if they never flowered again. They bloomed beautifully. But now, suddenly, after a two- to five-year absence, other daffodil leaves are poking their heads out of the ground all around the garden. There is even a giant yellow daffodil blooming in the deep shade under the lime and avocado trees at the end of the garden.
This should not be happening. To begin with, daffs need sunlight. They like moist soil while leafing and blooming, and rarely get that under large trees without regular watering. On top of that, this daffodil is growing at the edge of a clay bank that gets baked in summer.
Most importantly, I have never planted daffodils anywhere near the end of that orchard. This is a feral daffodil.
Daffodils do grow from seed, but unlike the old weed varieties of agapanthus or acanthus, they rarely do it themselves, multiplying instead as young bulbs form from the older ones, which is why clumps of daffs needs thinning every four to eight years.
But this has been a weird couple of growing seasons, with an extraordinary amount of 'self-propagation'. Ancient gardening lore has many examples of giving plants a hard time to encourage them to flower or fruit: cincturing fruit tree branches by removing a thin slice of bark to prompt a recalcitrant tree into fruiting, or reducing fertiliser from a previously well-fed orchard for an earlier crop, or the old 'a dog, a woman and a walnut tree: the more you beat 'em, the better they be' advice, which is not to be followed unless you want canker in your walnut tree, plus other severe repercussions.
This year and last year the most unexpected plants have not only produced seed but scattered it, and that seed has germinated. Various plots have been invaded by a horde of naked ladies, or belladonna lilies. Baby camellias are springing up, as are juvenile bunya nut trees. Every time I turn around there seems to be an avocado tree that I'm sure wasn't there a month ago.
And now the daffodils are going crazy.
Hopefully this means that it's going to be an extremely good year to collect daffodil seed if you want to grow hundreds of free bulbs. Let the seed heads mature on the plant till the seed head looks dryish and the leaves are withering. Plant the seeds in a weed-free pot, about 5cm deep. Keep the pot in a sunny spot outside, or somewhere it will go through next winter, and be patient, as they may not germinate till spring next year. (They may also surprise you and germinate this summer.)
Leave the seedlings in the pot for another year, to get bulbs big enough to safely plant out, then bury the bulb about as deep as the width of your hand. Many daffs are planted too shallowly, which is great for the first year of blooming, but doesn't give them enough protection in our hot summers. They'll need at least six hours of sunlight a day when blooming and leafing, and moist soil, too, but too much wet or badly drained soil in summer when the tops have died down will lead to bulb rot. Hot wet soil and humid mid-summers are the worst.
If you want to cosset them, or win a prize at the show, feed them with a low-nitrogen, high-potash fertiliser when the leaf tips appear, and then a more complete fertiliser as soon as the flower fade. If your daffs fail to bloom, they may have needed more watering while the leaves were growing, or more sunlight if the tress around them have grown and thickened since the bulbs were planted, or if the clumps have grown too large, try diving them.
As for our feral daff, I suspect the seed was carried on wombat, wallaby or possum fur before the drought, and covered in 'mulch' i.e. the weeds I throw under the fruit trees, just enough to give the right depth for planting. It is a small flowering miracle that I adore.
But if more feral daffs appear, or begin to spread past the garden areas, it might be time to be concerned.
This week I am:
- Still waiting for the postie to bring the bare-rooted fruit trees I ordered.
- Hacking back the gone-wild kiwi fruit and deciduous hibiscus in a manner far too severe to be called 'pruning'.
- Watching the leaves sprout of the azaleas and the buds swell on the magnolia.
- Hopefully getting around to feeding the young citrus trees about half an hour before a rainstorm.
- Planting more purple asparagus. It is impossible to grow too much asparagus - no one ever refuses an offer of a bunch or two of fresh fat purple stems.
- Realising that the scattering of autumn leaves that didn't get raked up in autumn have now done their ecological duty and turned themselves back into soil.