Planting colour for spring

by Mars
Planting daffodils

As the gardening tasks for the year wind down, November is still quite busy for us as every year as we add more daffodils to our garden, which gives us much needed colour in spring.

As we are in a very rural location, we can’t get away with planting tulips in the field and wild areas because the rabbits dig them up, so daffodils are the way to go for us. Over the past few years, we’ve ‘wilded’ the area around our copper beach tree which attracts pollinators during the summer. In the spring, as everything re-establishes, we wanted some colour in this area so we’ve decided to plant this area out with daffodils.

This year we’re planting bulbs from Dutch Grown again because we really like their selection and the quality of their bulbs is excellent. There are very few soft or squidgy bulbs and the success rate from their bulbs is excellent.

The daffodils we planted this autumn are Art Design, British Gamble, Can Can Girl, Double Star, Lingerie, Virginia Sunrise and Happy Smiles.

We will provide regular updates in spring on the varieties we’ve planted, so if you don’t want to miss out on these updates please subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Instagram and YouTube.

How we plant bulbs in the field

From experience, we’ve found that the best way to plant bulbs in wild grass areas or in a field is to use a pitch fork and spade. We identify the area(s) where we want to plant the bulbs, use the pitch fork and spade to cut out the shape, and we then lift and remove the turf. This automatically gives us a planting depth of more than 10cm. We then remove some more soil to get us to a depth of 15-20cm.

We then place the bulbs following the spacing advice, sprinkle some compost over them, replace the soil we removed and then place the turf where it was. Stomp it down and you’re done. We’ve found that this is the fastest and simplest way, and within a few days you can’t even see where the bulbs have been planted.

Then, in spring, when it’s looking dreary we’ll get some great burst of colour and with time the bulbs will naturalise and spread.

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