Growing Miniatures – Opinions

Over the years, I have been sent a number of private e-mails asking why a particular Miniature that was exhibited on a show bench or submitted as a photo on DaffNet has not yet been Selected for evaluation or marked for same or even named and available for purchase. The answers to these questions strongly relates to the topic of growing Miniature Daffodils. These are my opinions; not necessarily hard scientific fact but my opinions based on 23 years of experience raising and growing Miniature Daffodils here in Sherwood, Oregon. Other growers, raisers and hybridizers in other climates and in other parts of the world might well have had totally different experience. The opinions DO NOT APPLY to Standard Daffodils. Modern, often tetraploid, Standard Daffodils seem to “work” quite differently from their Miniature relatives.

To me, Miniature Daffodils are enchanting, lovely, and exciting. At the same time, I also find them maddening, frustrating, and sometimes downright depressing. My experience with growing Miniatures closely parallels their history. One need only to go to Alec Gray’s catalog(s) from fifty or sixty years ago or the A. D. S. Approved Miniatures List(s) from the 1970s or even the 1980s to realize how VERY few, highly touted and apparently well received things actually remain in commerce. So many are, for all practical purposes, extinct. See what I mean about being downright depressing!

The overall grow-ability of Miniatures, especially seedlings as well as my Selections, has been maddening. I can’t tell you (or possibly won’t tell you) of the huge number of losses I have had and still experience in both Miniature Seedlings and their Selections. On occasion, I have had as many as 29 bulbs of a Selection, seemingly growing well without a care or concern. These are lined out again and in a single year or two, nary a leaf or a wisp of foliage ever shows again. These losses or the rapid decline symptoms of what I call suffering from “the Dwindles”, seem to have no pattern or discernible organic cause. I have spent many hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on both soil and necrotic tissue tests that have only given me results back of rot or fusarium. Oh, thanks a lot, I knew it rotted but why???

In what may be a futile attempt to do things differently, I have pulled way, way back from rapidly naming and introducing Miniatures. I have lengthened the evaluation time by many years. I now desperately try to hold to the personal rule of NEVER Selecting any Miniature without having at least five discreet blooming size bulbs that have given at least seven to nine flowers in the year of Selection. Once I start my “official” Selection process, I’m in for at least five to seven years of annual lifting along with an additional five years of ultimate field line-outs. I do use a rigorous spray program, prophylacticly applying what I should, when I should, with absolute minimum amounts called for. I seem to be growing things really well but it may be that others are far better growers than I.

The less junk or marginal stuff of mine that I handle, the better I like it. A lighter workload is a good thing! The health and vigor never shows up in the DaffNet photos or on the show bench. I think this is just another way of me winnowing down the stupid Miniatures (or so I try and convince myself). Regardless of retail price, I am trying to hold to not introducing any Miniature without having a stock of at least 60 or so bulbs. Ideally, I would like to do my utmost best to make certain that every Selection and/or named Miniature grows as well as their Standard sized brethren.

>From a purely mercenary standpoint, these growing decisions have, quite frankly, been unbelievably stupid. The interest and demand for the new Miniatures is quite high. I do think that these personal decisions are better viewed as long term decisions that will benefit the daffodil world, my future customers, and hopefully all future growers of Miniatures.

Steve

Steve Vinisky

Sherwood, Oregon USA