When you buy a daffodil bulb, you buy for keeps. No replacement will ever be needed, so your original outlay, spread over 10 to 15 years – by which time the variety may have become outmoded – amounts to about one postage stamp per annum.
Not only that, but the bulb you buy will increase, with no effort on your part.
In a few years, the one bulb you start with will have presented you, at no cost at all, with a dozen or more replicas of itself. There is no floral investment better than daffodils.
Try Top Daffodils
When we urge you to try a few top daffodils, we are not referring to the latest introductions. Still, fanciers’ or breeders’ items and available only from the introducers at $25 to $100 each.
We mean the many good newer ones that have become generally, if not universally, available and which sell for two to three times the price of standard old sorts—in other words, from a quarter to a dollar apiece.
But few of them come as high as the latter price. Of course, you will want to get varieties of different types, not only for the sake of different forms.
Daffodil Varieties To Try
This is the only way to have them enjoy over a long season. So here are a few suggestions to start you off.
For very early bloom, order the following:
- FEBRUARY GOLD, a robust growing yellow trumpet
- ADA FINCH, a white giant trumpet
- ADVENTURE and UNSURPASSABLE: are two huge yellow trumpets
- MOUNT HOOD, a wonderful white trumpet
Medium Trumpets And Short Cups
In the medium trumpets and the short cups, many of which now have startlingly brilliant red or orange centers, are the following:
- DICK WELLBAND
- KANSAS
- SELMA LAGERLOF
- FIREBIRD
- RENE DE CHALONS
If you want something unique, LA ARGENTINA, white with a white cup marked with radiating broad bands of gold.
(And we can’t resist recommending two old timers that still are tops: JOHN EVELYN and DAISY SCHAFFER)
Two good “pink” daffodils, now very moderate in price, are MRS. R. 0. BACKHOUSE and PINK FANCY.
The Latest Poeticus Varieties
The latest to flower are the poeticus varieties with brilliant white petals and small ted-rimmed yellow cups, which gave this group the common name pheasant’s eye.
Some newer varieties are ACTEA and MINUET LADY ESTEVAN – one of the loveliest of all daffodils —of this type, though classed as a small cup.
For fragrance, include a few of the poctaz or cluster-flowered sorts. CRAG-FORD, one of the newer ones, is a cream white with deep orange centers.
The dainty CHEERFULNESS is still the most popular – a double cluster-flowered daffodil that should find a place in every garden.
These, then, are a few of the worthwhile new daffodils which are generally available to you.
Keep them in mind when ordering your bulbs; as we stated before, there is no floral investment better than in daffodils.
For variety in form and blooming season, color, and fragrance, you can’t go wrong with these.
44659 by F. F. Rockwell