Daffodils in the forest garden
I've
been struggling with daffodils in the garden for years. You see,
they come up as weeds in my raised beds and cover ground I want to
farm. For years, I've been giving bulbs away by the hundred, but
we still have scores of them blooming beside the old house, as well as
two thousand in straight rows by the driveway where I transplanted them
out of the way our first spring. I can't bear to just weed them
out and be done with it --- the blooms are just so pretty.
This past winter, I read
that early
spring ephemerals are useful in the forest garden since they suck up
water-soluble nutrients when nothing else is active. When their
leaves die back in the summer, the plant matter rots down and releases
those nutrients which might have otherwise washed away. In
essence, the ephemerals have acted as a nutrient bank, holding onto
nitrogen until the trees are actively growing again.
Given that bit of
information, our daffodils finally found a purpose on the farm and I
transplanted about a hundred of them into the soil around our fruit
trees. I know you're not supposed to transplant daffodils in the
spring, but I've honestly had a hard time killing them and I like to
move the bulbs when I know I'm getting ones big enough to bloom
immediately. And bloom they did --- the yellow flowers have been
unfurling all week, brightening my day every time I look in their
direction.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Kelly Jo --- I can see why you'd like them. They are certainly cheerful!
Ikwig --- glad to know I'm not the only one fighting off daffodils. I've given so many to my friends that they won't talk to me at this time of year.
Like you said, by summer I don't know where they are (and can't be bothered to find them.)