Last year I planted a number of new daffodil acquisitions in a new location. The location is very loose soil and used to have a woodpile over it, so there is much decomposed wood matter in the soil. I have top-dressed with a balanced fertilizer as I learned the hard way that if you have too much undecomposed organic matter on the top of the bed, its decomposition will suck all the nitrogen out of the soil and make it hard for any plant to survive.
I was just out today planting this year’s acquisitions in various spots around the plantation, and noticed that many of the daffodils in that old woodpile bed have broken ground, including late-blooming poets. I’m thinking of buying some commercial topsoil and top-dressing this bed to cover those tips up. What do you all think? The one tazetta in the bed, ‘Castanets’, is up the farthest, but that doesn’t surprise me in this area. It is the other divisions I am concerned about.
This is in Cincinnati, OH, Zone 5A-B.
Bill Lee