I’ve been fascinated by the discussion on glyphosate and its possibe after effects. I have always thought it became inactive when it reached the ground, only being absorbed into the plant and its system. I have now decided it’s not quite like that, so what’s new? I think David Adams’ remarks about the expensive version of glyphosate – Roundup, and the fact that it contains a penetrant is very significant. We only use it on paths to remove dandelions and other deep rooted weeds and it often needs two or three applications. We hand weed the beds, very soothing for the soul. We try to grow our daffodils without any chemical control and for the past ten or more years have been using a system that is based on dig up and replant in new ground straight away. We have twelve beds to play with so the daffodils are planted again after inspection and sorting into the beds that had the tulips (English florists’ tulips which are dug up every year). We literally dig up a row and walk over to the prepared ex-tulip bed and replant. James has a plan in his head which rotates daffodils, tulips and veggies.This gives us a four year rotation before the daffodils arrive back in the same soil. We were losing so many bulbs to basal rot before this. I think that bulbs are very vulnerable to B R while they are in storage so we just cut out the storage element with great success. The only other nasty that we have is the Large Narcissus fly which we deal with by throwing enviromesh over the beds after show time and pinning it down along the sides and ends. Rain and light are let in but fly kept out.This is a manageable system in our garden, it would have to be scaled up for large growers but I think it could still be done. The tulips are traditionally planted in November in the potato beds which are mucked for the spuds. In their daffodil phase the beds have an additional high potash feed, Growmore and anything else that is to hand that is organic, homemade compost or seaweed. Our tulips are stored through the summer in cool conditions in paper bags and are the preferred food snack of just about anything with a face (do slugs have a face?) mice or squirrels mainly. They are cleaned within an inch of their lives once they have dried to obviate putting anything on them for tulip fire. Attached last April’s English Florists’ Tulip bed Wendy Akers