Strawberries and daffodils

Both of these like well drained, sandy soils in the southern states. Choose
a variety that is fairly short in height growing in and among well spaced
out daffodils. By the time you have harvested a years supply of
strawberries, you can quit watering the strawberries and pull them out
letting the daffodils then dry off for the summer.

You can add a mix of Cilantro, parsleys, garlic, chives, dill ETC and
probably never water the bed at all by the time you harvest.

Not sure about your area of Georgia but folks need to realize that just
because they don’t water a raised bed or a field of daffodils that there is
no guarantee that Mother Nature will not dump three to four feet of water
some years on your dormant flower/daffodil beds!

In the southern states, raised beds placed in full sun can become way over
heated if you do not have a “green mulch” (plants/flowers/weeds) that shade
the soil surface during the heat of the summer!

Not too many years ago a few folks on this list dug up and heat treated all
of their show bulbs, treated them with insecticides, fungicides and stored
them in mesh bags during the summers in climate controlled basements or
garages!

The big nematode threat to daffodils is the “Bulb and Stem Nematode”. Last
time I looked there were more than 360 different species of plants, weeds
and grasses that this one species of nematode used as a host plant. Any
species of Rye or Fescue grass is a host as are many of the common yard
weeds. There are probably a lot of obscure species of nematodes that also
will feed on our daffodils.

Viruses are endemic in many of the varieties of daffodils. Various root rots
and bulb rot inducing pathogens are in all of the soils. These are airborne
as spores are carried into our yards and flower beds every time we bring in
more plants, or our yards are visited by more birds, wild animals and even
our pets! When was the last time any of us disinfected our pruning tools,
our trowels and shovels and rakes:-))?

Keith Kridler Mt. Pleasant, Texas severe drought last year but we still got
27 inches (68 CM) of rainfall. Looks like we will have severe flooding this
week as we are predicted to get another 7 inches (18 CM) of rainfall today
to add to the 7 inches we got 10 days ago:-))