American Daffodil Society, General

To deadhead or not?

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From: Larry B Duck
Subject: Dead heading seed pods

Message Body:

A UK garden show that I watch recommended trimming the seed pods from daffodils but I don’t see anything on your website about this. Do you recommend this? I plant gigantic star, ice follies, red Devon, and fortissimo each year.

5 comments for “To deadhead or not?”

  1. Dead heading!
    This takes me back a few years but the RHS did
    trials on this.
    The conclusion was 50/50 or it makes little difference.
    But only remove the seed head if you do it, the main stem acts like a leaf
    in absorbing sunlight to feed next years bulb or bulbs. The action called
    photosynthesis.
    Hope that helpful,
    Ian
    Standish, UK

  2. I dead head all the time. I have insects in my garden that pollinate the
    blooms. That is not self pollination. I have heard the pros and cons of
    both methods, but it sure helps me when I start collection my crosses. I
    don’t have to worry about open pollinated seed.

    I saw a study years ago that said that if you let the seed pot grow and
    produce seed the bulb will produce weaker flowers the following year.
    Don’t know the truth of it, but sounds like a good reason to dead head.

    I was taught daffodils under Marie Bozievich and she always dead headed
    everything in her garden. I had a terrible time with her because I
    hybridize and she wanted to dead head my crosses. Took a couple years and
    me marking my crosses with a yellow ribbon before she learned not to dead
    head my crosses. :-)

    Clay

  3. Hi, Larry,
    The risks vs rewards are not there for me on deadheading. I think your TV show deadheads to tidy things up, in other words for cosmetic reasons. If you plant the same bulbs every year, I’m thinking by now you must have 1000s of flowers over a fairly large parcel of land. Are they viewed from across a field, or up close and personal? Here is how you can tell if you need to deadhead for cosmetic reasons: the beds they are growing in have a nice crisp sod (or other) edge. If you don’t have that, then no deadheading is necessary.

    The time it would take boggles the mind. Most people would clip those dead flowers with a scissors, or even pinch them off with their fingers, and both those are a big no-no due to transmission of virus. I think you’re supposed to pull off dead flowers, but I don’t do it, so I’m not sure how well it works.

    If we who routinely pay $5.00 or more per bulb with little markers for each of our bulbs get unknown seedlings popping up, it can be disaster for the 1000s of different bulbs we grow. The names would be all mixed up. If you got some seedlings, would it even matter? I’m thinking seedlings would look pretty with the four you’ve chosen.

    I say no on deadheading for cosmetic reasons unless it’s a formal or semi-formal bed.

    Suzy Wert
    Indianapolis

  4. Suzy,
    The problem of not dead heading is like I had in North Carolina when I
    stopped dead heading my miniature jonquils. I had several large clumps of
    jonquils and most of the miniature jonquils are self pollinating. After a
    couple of years, i started finding miniature jonquils coming up over a wide
    range of my daffodil beds, including the Standards. You don’t know if they
    are seff-pollinated or crosses that are coming up out of the ground. So I
    went back to dead heading them all. I never got rid of all the jonquil
    seedling that came up, as they kept coming back year after year. When I
    moved from NC, I’m sure the new owner had a garden full of the miniature
    jonquils. By the way the same applies to N. bulbocodium. They self
    pollinated in the south and spring up all over the place.

    clay

  5. I grow ~1,000 varieties and do not deadhead.  I expect I do not because I get few (Maybe 20 or so) of OP crosses.  Likely because our bees are not active during Daffodil bloom time.  If the OP pod is on a good variety (not my garden flowers like Ice Follies) I keep it.  Some times I plant it knowing the seed parent and sometimes send the seeds to some up and coming hybridizer.  If I can get someone new interested in hybridizing I do it.   Before I even knew about the ADS I was planting seeds from OP parents.  I always dreamed of creating some new variety.  Thanks to Bob Spotts and the internet I joined the ADS and have pursued this obsession whole hardily.    Check out my latest 3013 1st year bloom.  The ridges have smoothed out since I took this pic.  It is very symmetrical and stands out as a show flower.  I’m not big into Y-Y flowers but this one has great potential at 100mm.  I’ll update the pic because it has improved as it ages.

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