Tazettas, Rugulosus, Butter and Eggs, Pheasant’s Eye, Hoop Petticoat, and little Sweet Jonquil (Narcissus jonquilla simplex) grow in all old southern gardens along with Snowflakes. These I have always known and loved.
Indeed, just as one carries a bloom of Michelia fuscata in the pocket or the hand and places small bundles of Vetiveria or Khus-khus roots in closets to perfume linens.
I’m hardly ever without a little Sweet Jonquil when it is in bloom because its fragrance is just delightful.
These old daffodils and jonquils are almost growing wild at old abandoned home sites, fields, and out-of-the-way places where garden refuse has been dumped.
One day, on a ramble, I passed a field and found hogs busily rooting up bulbs. I let them work and retrieved the bulbs, which were very early blooming.
Single Roman Hyacinths
Most floriferous yellow trumpets grow about 5” inches high and have pretty silvery-green foliage.
Before collectors got them, the single Roman Hyacinths, in white and hues of pink and blue, also carpeted forsaken places.
The first bulbs I ever bought came from the five-and-ten-cent store 30 years ago. It was late in spring, and they were stuffed in a large glass jar.
Yet they had pale green spears. Their urge to live was so strong I felt compelled to rescue them and asked the salesgirl how much she wanted for the whole lot.
She quoted a ridiculously low price, and I bought them all. On my way out, after shopping at the store, I passed by the same counter and saw the gallon jar was full again.
I bought its contents and asked if many more bulbs were languishing in jars around the store.
When I was told there were several bushels, I gave up, came home, and planted what I had.
Some of the bulbs were so dry they didn’t survive, but now I simply cannot throw a weak plant away! I planted them all.
Swan’s Neck
The next spring, a few bloomed, and the second spring … ahhh! My garden danced with daffodils, mostly Paper Whites but many big trumpets, large cups, and bicolors.
Delirious with happiness, I sent for daffodil catalogs at once, ordered the varieties I wanted out of them, and set out to “stroke me the ground with daffadowndillies.”
Among the old varieties I have collected since then is the small, almost pure white trumpet called Swan’s Neck.
From one bulb I got 15 years ago, I now have 20. This is a modest little thing that never raises its head. You just chuck the bloom under the chin to see its full beauty.
First Bushel Varieties
The first bushel of named varieties I ordered included John Evelyn, Franciscus Drake, Fortune, and—bless the grower who threw in the handful—Cheerfulness.
I will never forget my supreme lush feeling when the bushel arrived. A miser with his gold felt no richer than I.
I have Mrs. R. 0 among the pinks. I have Backhouse, Pink Fancy, Lovenest, Pink Rim, Pink Glory, and others.
I grew Menthone for the first time this year. This daffodil has petals of the purest ivory and a frilled trumpet of . . . how can I describe the color?
It is like the inside of the old-time quill muskmelon. The trumpet is an indescribable apricot that opens and stays that color. It is different from all of the more than 200 varieties I grow.
Miniatures
Last year, I went overboard for miniatures. I thought, “A fool and his money, as I sent off my order but felt very wise when the bulbs bloomed.
I built a raised bed for them and incorporated a good bit of gravelly soil with the soil in it.
I edged the bed with brownfield stones and planted the taller February Gold, Bulbocodium conspicuus, and Canaliculatus toward the back and Angel’s Tears (so exquisitely perfect), W. P. Milner, Minimus, Johnstoni, and Queen of Spain toward the front.
Pearls of Spain
I bordered the whole with the white grape hyacinth (Muscari botryoides album), which my grandmother called Pearls of Spain.
I adorned it with clumps of Muscari plumosum, whose airy violet-blue plumes set off the baby daffs to perfection and look like strange blossoms from under the sea.
When the bulbs go, portulaca takes over in this bed and blooms until frost. In my funny garden, I like surprises.
What could be nicer than to come around a curved path and find, nestling under a crabapple tree in full bloom, a clump of Jonquilla Flore pleno with purple violets at its feet?
But then, I use daffodils everywhere except in my bog garden. I even grow them around rose beds in the back of violas and English daisies.
Zinnias, marigolds, petunias, and white periwinkle (beautiful in moonlight and wonderfully staggered with that southern favorite Bachelor Button) carry on when they go.
The annuals love the heat and last through the summer. They cover up the dying foliage of the daffs, and since they are thirsty, surface-rooted plants drink up the water before it gets to the bulbs.
One Misbehaves
In all the years I have grown daffodils, only one (I’m too much of a lady to call names) has not come back year after year with glorious flowers.
This rascal (King Alfred) blooms well for two years, then splits and gives nothing but luxuriant foliage.
Provided they are planted where they can dry off during the summer, anyone can grow daffodils without ifs, ands, or buts.
You will have lovely blossoms next spring when you plant a fat bulb with a brown satin covering still clinging to it.
Each big slab attached to it will produce a bloom, too. And if you are gone all summer and winter and return in spring, daffodils will be there to greet you.
In preparing a bed for bulbs, I dig at least 8” inches deep in good garden loam and mix a portion of bone meal and Vigoro well with the soil at the bottom.
Blooming of Small Daffodils
I plant bulbs four times as deep as they are high. I label as I plant, using stout wire with a plant label twisted into a loop at the top.
Then because even a husband is not above pulling up a label, I make a written record of where each variety is located.
Early in the fall, while the daffs are still sleeping, I fertilize established beds and borders and sow, in many of them, larkspur and California poppies.
These will be small when the daffs are blooming but will grow, help cover their dying foliage later and give bloom.
Season in Louisiana
My daffodil season here in Louisiana, depending on the vagaries of weather, runs from October or November at the latest.
When the old cluster-types bloom, straight through the Tazettas, the doubles, small and large cups, trumpets, colors.
It finally ends late in April with the old Narcissus biflorus called Adam and Eve, Man and Woman, or Twin Sisters because there are always just two blossoms to a stem.
Color Ranges
With daffodils, you run the gamut of size from the eensie-weensie like Minimus to the giant trumpets like Unsurpassable, which I have grown with stems a foot and a half long and with blooms 5” inches across.
Colors range from white through all shades of yellow into reds, oranges, and pinks. The form of blossoms varies as much.
Now for Thalia, which I have saved for the last just as I used to save (as a quit-off-bite) a big chunk cut out of the heart of a slice of watermelon when I was a child.
Heaven forbid, but if I could have only one daffodil, it would be the ethereally beautiful triandrus Thalia.
I have several hundred bulbs that bloom at the end of the season, just before the Twin Sisters.
I wish all readers of Popular Gardening could plant at least one bulb this fall. If they did, next spring, when it would bloom, they would stand back and admire, and you would hear “Thank you, Kitty,” ring out all over the land.
44659 by Kitty M. Simpson