Help for a new club

Hello: I am working with a new daffodil club in Gloucester County, Va., on organizing a new division for our annual ADS daffodil show, on daffodils in pots. I’m trying to gather some information on how various clubs handle this — and I would love to talk with a knowledgeable person in the ADS about this. Can you put me in touch with someone? Thank you! Marty Ross  title=

 

I believe this may be a club Peggy Bowditch has been trying to help start. I hope we can all wish them luck. Marty is a brand new member of the ADS. Please help make her welcome – – – -frank

4 comments for “Help for a new club

  1. Yes, folks in Gloucester would like some guidelines on container-grown daff entries–what size pot? How many bulbs are typically used, recommended varieties, pitfalls, etc.  Thanks!

  2. On the help for a new club at the Gloucester, VA Daffodil Show.

    I don’t do pots, however, the Currituck Volunteer Master Gardeners which I participated in were masters at growing any kind of bulbs in pots. I went to one of their classes.

    1. You need to have multiple layers of daffodil bulbs in the pot if you want to have a pot “filled” with daffodil blooms. One layer of bulbs will may your pot look like it needs help. Maybe as many as 40 bulbs in the pot depending on the size of the pot.

    2. Fill the pot half way with your medium (soil), place a layer of bulbs in the pot of top of the soil. Us single bulbs not doubles and triples. Use many bulbs as you can layer the top of the soil with.

    3. Add another layer of soil to the top of bulbs so that the tips are still showing. Place another layer of bulbs between the tips of the previously planted bulbs until the space is all taken.

    4. Repeat 3. Until the pot is as full as you would like it to be.

    5. Water. Pots will freeze if left above ground in the winter. The experts leave the posts in the garage until it gets cold and the bulbs form roots. At that time they need to go outside and sunk into the ground. I found that covering the post with leaves, and putting them on the south side of a building will keep them all winter.

    I used this procedure a couple of years, but didn’t take any to the a show and stopped doing it. It works well. However, I must admit that I only tried it with Rapture, Itzim, and the like miniatures. I went to the Philadelphia Flower Show and they have a competition of potted daffodils and I talked to the exhibitors. The exhibitors essentially said the same as I said above. However, I found all but one of the Philadelphia Flower Show daffodils to miss-named. But, they have a rule there, if the classification committee accepts it, the judges have to accept it as named.

    Hope that never comes to daffodil shows.

    Clay

  3. I saw Brent Heath (of Brent & Becky’s Bulbs) give a presentation on Bulbs as Companion Plants here in Nashville a couple of weeks ago.  He mentioned that early bloomers are the easiest to force in pots.  Jetfire and Tete-a-Tete are two I have seen grown successful in pots.  This makes sense with what Clay mentioned, as many miniatures grow early.  I have also seen wonderful pots of bulbocodiums.

  4. I met Peggy Bowditch of the new Gloucester club at the VDS fall meeting in Richmond on Saturday, Oct 6th and gave her two large grocery bags of daffodil bulbs. That will help her club when they have their fall meeting as it will add new bulbs to the mix.

    It also helped me get my daffodil number down to a working number for our move.

    Thanks to everyone that helped me reduce my inventory of bulbs.

    Clay

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