There has been some discussion about how long flowers survive under refrigerated conditions. I’m told 2-5C is ideal but even with 3 thermometers I’m not sure what temp. range I achieve. At times I’ve had ice in the water and at others the readings have been up to 8c – even 10c on one occasion – so, perhaps I’m not alone in that I have too many unknowns – the accuracy of thermometers and the range of the thermostat ? And to-morow we have a power cut for 10 hours!
I do know that standard daffodils keep well for more than 2 weeks if put in my fridge at early maturity. Soon I’m about to find out how many of these miniatures can last until the London Show on 15th April – more than two weeks for some of them.
Meanwhile the standards wisely refuse to open in the windy cold wet – (rain, HAIL and sleet) that we are getting at present. Those that had opened now have shattered petals and even those that were ‘goose-necked’ are badly bruised. Just a normal spring! It can only get better.
Brian
Clay Higgins
Dear All,
I am surprised by the discussion about how best to “keep” daffodils for show purposes. Even though I am new to daffnet and a total novice (not yet interested in showing anything), I would have thought that the question of how to “prepare” flowers for show would be standardized in order to avoid the impression of tampering with nature. If it’s not standardized yet, it ought to be, so as to avoid ever claiming that someone’s flowers had an unfair advantage and so on.
Niels
Niels:
From my observations over the past few years, a daffodil show is about how to most artfully present one’s blooms. It is certainly about much more than how they looked in the garden. So it is probably best to just accept this as the way the game is played, and learn to play it. Indeed, as with all great art, some of the techniques are known only to a few, and their results show it.
Form and Condition are both influenced substantially by grooming: coronas are made more round, petals are made more co-planar, dirt and stains are removed. Pose is one of the characters most frequently corrected, and even Stem points can be improved by gentle untwisting. Texture is smoothed with a gentle brushing after a warm water bath, or by other means.
It has been a slow process for me to learn these techniques, and one I’ve really only begun. The exhibits by the growers of many years experience do show the value of great grooming, and as you may have seen on Daffnet, the value of having an experienced person’s help can bring an otherwise ordinary bloom to Best in Show status.
In addition, the way that multiple-bloom collections are arranged and displayed plays a significant role in their beauty and thus their favorable impression on the judges.
This shows that despite discussions of DNA or other scientific esoterica, the world of the daffodil fanatic is still one of Art at least as much as Science, and thus standardization is not a goal that will be productively pursued, nor "nature" be exactly what is presented.
Melissa
Melissa Reading, Livermore, CA
Clay Higgins
My own one pennies worth-
I have had to get down and look at
the writing on the stem once or twice
to believe that a flower was mine after a friend
placed it in the show and she smoothed the petals
or rounded the cup before the next chore-
when I groom a flower myself it never looks
so different as when it happens magically-
I could say that I am not that good at it
which is true
but more accurately, I am still learning,
and it helps to buy good bulbs!
John Beck
Clay Higgins