Planting Daffodils: Spring is Just Around the Corner!

When I was growing up my mother had a series of ever more elaborate gardens. She started with a couple of beds at our first house when I was very little which I helped with.

As I got older, she used me for the less fun jobs, primarily weeding. Ugh.

Her later gardens were beautiful and were featured in our local newspaper and a national home magazine. My reaction to my experience in my mother’s garden was not to garden again for the next 30 years.

The first two houses that Mr. Herr and I owned were on town size lots. We kept the backyard mowed, but not much else. Not a lot of room for daffodils or flowers of any kind, really, at the first house and by the next house I was chasing flour children under the age of six. No time for flowers.

When we bought our current house, on a bit over two acres, we didn’t really do much. (See, children, running after; and rinks, driving to).

My standard joke was that we had weeds we mowed and weeds we didn’t mow. We were busy working and raising four children. In reality, we barely managed to keep the weeds mowed (In a stirring act of civil disobedience, one of the kids kept managing to run over the power mower cord).

Sometime around 2013, coincidentally after we’d had one child finish college, I started to get an itch to do something more than mow. The first thing I did was to plant some daffodils.

Our property is across the street from a school which was originally a private home. Behind that private house was a field that bloomed with daffodils every spring. That was my inspiration.

That first year I planted about 100 bulbs individually with a bulb digger. It was back-breaking. This is a picture from the spring of 2014:

Not quite what I had in mind. That’s when I developed the somewhat, unorthodox method I use now.

Because I’m usually planting 400-500 bulbs each fall I do it this way:

I dig a series of holes with a spade

And then place 4-6 bulbs in each hole. More bulbs per backache is a good trade to make.

I then cover them. Using this method, I can plant 100 bulbs in an hour.

The other thing I’ve learned is that, at least here in Climate Zone 6a, I can plant into January.

The Fall is a great time to plant bulbs, but the Fall usually gets away from me for one reason or another and I still have bulbs in the garage in late December

But we always seem to get a thaw right around the New Year and I rush out to do my planting then.

This is a picture from 2019

So, here’s the big takeaway: something hit me later in life and revived that gardening urge.

At least in New Jersey, it’s almost never too late to plant a bulb or six. Bulbs need about 6 weeks of cold in the ground so you are probably safe until late January.

And it’s ok to invent your own planting style. Your back will like you better for it. I’ve also tried several different bulb suppliers. Even though they can be a little more expensive, The Works from White Flower Farm has the best variety and best quality bulbs.

Here’s what all of this yields.