Daffodil bulbs - in all their variety...
This place is blessed with so many: in drifts that pre-date my family's presence here; in swathes that represent my mother's yearly raising of seed from existing bulbs, and my own landscaping efforts. Apart from the garden bed above most of them are naturalised in both lawn and woodland areas. There comes a time, especially as long grass here in North Canterbury can quickly become a fire risk, that bulbs in grass must be mown down.
Ideally they should be left to yellow, like the kingcup leaves, but the clement cool and wet weather we have been having, is keeping them green and I have made a ruthless decision.
The daffodils and their companion snowflakes have had at least six weeks of good growing since they flowered in the spring and now hopefully this will set them up for flowering next year.
If the may has finished flowering, if you are planting tomatoes outside, if plums and apples are plumping on the trees, then it is time to at least think about mowing naturalised bulbs.
Ideally they should be left to yellow, like the kingcup leaves, but the clement cool and wet weather we have been having, is keeping them green and I have made a ruthless decision.
The daffodils and their companion snowflakes have had at least six weeks of good growing since they flowered in the spring and now hopefully this will set them up for flowering next year.
If the may has finished flowering, if you are planting tomatoes outside, if plums and apples are plumping on the trees, then it is time to at least think about mowing naturalised bulbs.
10 comments:
I do so love to share your Southern Hemisphere Spring when here I look out of my window on a wet, windy November day. Daffs and celandines are so cheerful keep the flowers coming.
am loving your old house.. it has a certain style
I so agree with the cuby poet.
Your garden is a reminder that spring and summer will come round to us again, eventually.
I am gradually planting out bulbs, and hope the mice and squirrels will leave me some! Especially love the miniature daffs.
Love that celandine and jonquils.
It seems a shame to have to mow the bulbs but I know fire risk was always high at our previous property in the north.
Lady Magnon has been secretly planting Daff bulbs all over the 'lawn'. I'm a little concerned for Spring 2013.
the cuby poet: It's turn and turn about this sharing of the seasons. Watching Northern Hemisphere blogs helped brighten my winter too -even if you did have it pretty wet this year!
John Gray: It does indeed - a bit of a maverick in the local architectural vernacular. My mother was attracted to it in 1962 because it was like a solid English farmhouse (she didn't trust all these timber jobs), oh, and it had the luxury at the time of a flush toilet!
rusty duck: I am wondering what with your mouse problem and a loss for me of some nice white jonquils that I transplanted into loose leaf-littery ground, if the mice can't dig easily in my precominantly heavy soil. Do you have any clayey patches or silt loam, where you could establish bulbs?
Susan Heather: I have left a wee drift under fruit trees to mature uncut. It's such a small area and easy to tackle if it suddenly dries out and to my mind it just looks like a nice woodlandy hem.
Cro: Keep it up the-other-Lady M. And just you keep your wicked blades off till you've planted your tomatoes out Cro ;-)
You may have something there. I had been digging out trenches, so I could arrange in drifts. The mice then move in on the freshly dug earth. Perhaps I should be using a bulb planter and leaving hard packed earth around them.
Ah yes, we're having fun keeping up the garden at both places (sounds grand doesn't it!!) The rental property has some very pretty purple flowers which I have no idea what they are!!
You are going to take a piece of purple for your own garden aren't you? In years to come it will be an earthquake house memory!
haha, yes I have snipped and planted and saved seeds for the past year. At my own house I have a yellow garden and another area for pinks, purples and blues.
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