Welcome, Farmer Fred listeners!

I was talking bulbs with Farmer Fred on his Get Growing with Farmer Fred radio show, Sunday, December 1 from 9:00 - 10:00 a.m. Listen to us on the podcast.

I'm a garden writer, a California Master Gardener, and a daffodil nut.

Here are links about topics we discussed on the December 1, 2013 show.

How to plant daffodils: Choose a well-drained site that has full sun all year, or full sun when the leaves are off the trees. Dig a trench or hole 6" deep, add phosphorus mixed with the soil at the bottom of the hole, add compost to the soil you have removed, plant the bulbs pointy end up, tuck tulips in next to them if you don't have deer, add 2 inches more amended soil then layer in small bulbs, add soil to bring the gently tamped-down soil even with the rest of the garden. Label the bed with the names of the bulbs. Do not water. 

Sources of phosphorus can be soft rock phosphate or bone meal if you have acid soil, and high P packaged guanos or worm castings if you have neutral or alkaline soil. Highly concentrated sources of phosphorus like Super Phosphate should be used with caution and applied only after reading the label carefully -- it is easy to over-apply these products and although phosphorus does not move vertically through the soil it does move laterally and excess phosphorus can lead to water pollution and algae bloom.

Not all daffodils need to be pre-chilled for USDA zone 9; there are many daffodils that do well in warm climates.

The Northern California Daffodil Society has excellent information about growing daffodils. NCDS organizes free daffodil shows each spring so you can see which bulbs you'd want to grow in your garden. Some of the members are busy hybridizing green daffodils.


Answers to listener questions:

White daffodils to plant in the shape of a moon in Garden Valley, CA at 2,500 feet: 'Mount Hood' we mentioned but also consider 'Misty Glen'. Plant just one variety so that the blooms will show a solid shape, either round or crescent.

For a piney area in Texas in USDA zone 8a, plant any daffodil but be sure the site is in full sun and well-drained.

Thanks for visiting. Please leave a comment and let me know which bulbs you are planting.

Join me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter for more daffodil chat

To leave a comment, click on the word COMMENTS below

That Rose Campion--she seemed like such a nice girl!

Lychnis coronaria (Rose Campion) Photo: Stockxpert

Rose Campion. She sounds like a demure little plant, doesn’t she? Her Latin name is Lychnis coronaria. Again, nothing to give you a clue about her feisty nature.

Lychnis coronaria’s looks are nothing to write home about. She grows from a basal rosette of fuzzy, gray-green leaves and sends up many branching stems almost three-feet tall, with small, magenta flowers in early summer.

She’s no Homecoming Queen. So where does she get the tremendous self-confidence required to take over one of my perennial beds?

She came to my garden more than 15 years ago, as a gift to the previous owners. They were quite amused when she self-seeded in the shady edges near the back fence. She's a biennial, so one year would pass with few appearances from her, and the following year her flowers would be a happy surprise.

All that changed when she moved up in the world and got a toehold in a perennial bed.

No one invited her, she just showed up. Wanting to be polite to a new girl in the neighborhood, I let her hang out with the much prettier and more popular girls, the Tall Bearded Irises and herbaceous Peonies. Apparently the compost tea went to her head like wine.

Next thing I knew she was being rude to the perfectly nice Shasta Daisies, who never caused anyone any trouble.

Now she’s everywhere, grabbing attention as if she were Paris Hilton. I think she even has a Twitter account.

Only the mule deer seem able to ignore her.

Some of my gardener friends say they’d like her to come visit them, since she doesn’t mind the blistering foothills sun and doesn’t need a lot of water after the first summer.

Just watch out. She seems like a sweet little thing, but she’s a Mean Girl at heart.

© Daffodil Planter 2009. All rights reserved.

For a free email subscription to this blog go to the upper-right corner of the page

Your Vote on Vinca?

My Banner Mountain neighborhood is Action Central for Vinca right now--major, minor, whatever, it's all blooming like mad. 

I was admiring the plethora of Vinca during a walk this evening, and suddenly my Inner Garden Critic chimed in. He seemed to be an Englishman.

The internal dialogue was like those old cartoons, with a pitchfork-carrying Devil sitting on one's shoulder. This time it was a shovel-carrying Inner Garden Critic on my shoulder. 

It went something like this:

DP:  Oh, another bank of Vinca major in bloom! What a lovely shade of blue-violet those flowers are!

IGC:  I beg to differ! What could possibly be more of a garden cliche than Vinca major?

DP:  (falteringly) But I like it. And it's not St. John's wort.

IGC:  You make an excellent point. Vinca major is simply ubiquitous while St. John's wort is actively unattractive. But do please scan the horizon. Your neighborhood is absolutely swathed in Vinca major.

DP:  Well, not many groundcovers get through our snowy winters and dry summers. You know the deer don't eat Vinca. And it's fire retardant too. It's pretty much the perfect plant here.

IGC:  (splutters) Perfect plant? My good woman, I had imagined you finally understood the importance of native plants--and you know very well that Vinca is not native. 

DP:  You're right, you're so right. If there were a good native substitute I'd be glad to use it. 

IGC:  (coldly) It is invasive too, as I should not have to remind you.

DP:  Listen, with my clay soil I need plants called "invasive" just so they stay alive. 

IGC:  Hmmph. Well, at least you grow Vinca minor 'Sterling Silver' with variegated leaves. I suppose I can live with that.

DP:  Thanks. Now let's stop arguing so we can enjoy this walk together.

Silence, as I take a few more steps.

DP:  Oh, would you look at that! There's a magenta azalea about to open!

Inner Garden Critic screams and leaps off my shoulder.

And you, dear reader--whose side are you on? What's your vote on Vinca?

Dinner Date in the Sierra Nevada Foothills

No, we're not having venison for dinner! Perish the thought. That's one of my dinner guests you're looking at. As you can see, she's enjoying an appetizer. 

Garden bloggers around the world are hosting fantasy dinner parties Saturday night, the brain wave of Veg Plotting. 

My fantasy dinner guests are all residents of Nevada County who spend a great deal of time in gardens: garden author Carolyn Singer, garden blogger Pomona Belvedere, and two mule deer. I considered inviting a mountain lion too (another of our wild neighbors) but was concerned that his social skills might be lacking.

Carolyn is writing a series of books on deerproof gardening (the first two volumes of Deer In My Garden are in print right now). 

The two mule deer would be chewing a series of plants in my garden, but there isn't much here to interest them, thanks to Carolyn. One of our perennial beds is in the middle of a longtime deer trail, so the deer hop the fence in, look around, and hop another fence out. 

Pomona is a scholar and a gardener, steeped in lore from garden literature past and present. She blogs at Tulips in the Woods.

Pomona pointed out the potential seating problems, so we will serve dinner buffet style in the living room, where the two deer can recline on sofas.

The menu for humans includes goat cheese pizza and salad; the deer will have organic roses and tulips (I think they like those), with a salt lick as a palate cleanser between courses.

I hope for a wide-ranging discussion on how gardeners and deer can peacefully coexist, with creative and productive gardens alongside happy habitats for deer. It's possible the deer will lodge some complaints about our dog who barks (but does not chase). 

With any luck we can end the evening with some hoof-tapping dancing!