Shock and awe Annette, shock and awe. I admire you for going away for spring break but I couldn't have been pried away from my yard during bloom season. My husband lost his fishing partner when I started gardening. Everything is so beautiful!

Thank you Bet, William and Kabby!

Kabby, it was hard leaving leaving for vacation, and I did miss a few blooms. The weather got so warm here with no rain when we were gone. I was amazed at how quickly some the bulbs grew, bloomed, and had flowers that were dying when we got back.

Next year for spring break, my DS will be going with his friends, and I will be at home enjoying the garden.

Can you please tell me what some of those flowers are?? They are all very beautiful and you have a wonderful garden but I am truly amazed by some of them. From the top I'd like to know the names of picture 11, 13, 14 ,15, 17, & 27. They are amazing to me. Thank you so much, have a blessed day. Thank you!!!

@Cem9165 Beautiful gardens .. I have a question .. How do you like using pine needles as mulch ??
I was thinking of using them as I have a TON of them from our pines. Thank you

Welcome to ATP @NewGardenGirl08 ! Thanks for your kind comments, I've labeled the pictures for you :smily:.

Thanks @Shannon! I love using the pine straw as mulch, we've used it for years. We get 60-80 bales put down about every 6 months. It breaks down easily and helps to amend the soil. You're fortunate enough to have a TON available for you to use.

Gorgeous display Annette! I'm especially loving all those pinks together- such an enchanting spot

Annette I was impressed with you hiding the border in the hyacinth bed with the pinestraw. So simple yet so beautiful.
And good for you being able to stay home for bloom next year.

Really impressive Annette!

Thanks Neal, Kabby, and Dirt! I'm also looking forward to seeing everyone else's blooms this spring!

Neal, I'm also loving the pink combos. I'll need to consider some pink early, mid, and late blooming tulips for next spring. I wanted some tulips blooming at the same time as the weeping Kwanzan Cherry trees, however the trees have not begun to bloom yet. The tulips may be done blooming this year before the trees start

Annette = Bulbsville
All the work and planning yields Georgia's best bulb show...and to our delight she shares!

Cem9165 said:I can't believe spring is around the corner. What spring bulbs are you looking forward to seeing bloom this year?

The Dutch irises and muscari have had leaves above ground for months here in GA. Also, thanks to our confusing weather and a lot or rain, the daffodils and tulips are also putting up leaves, and some hyacinths are blooming.

Anyone else seeing their bulbs sprouting earlier than normal?

N. Candy Princess blooming spring of 2015

Welcome to the site koch.

Koch

I have a question for all you daffadil aficianados:

Out of 50 Dutch Master daffodils in divided into 4 separate clusters in the same flower bed as their original grouping, I have ONE bloom and NO budding stalks on the others. All the tall green fronds, thoiugh. What's wrong??

Last spring (the first bloom-time) all were together in one large area and bloomed gorgeous, impressive. As each bloom bec ame spent, I snapped off that bloom and its swollen seed/ ovary. I allowed the fronds to turn yellow and lay on the ground, getting paler; cutting & removing all fronds at the same time exactly 6 weeks after the last bloom. (B&B gave me this advice and timing.) A fews weeks later, I had this area carefully dug up and recovered the bulbs. After trimming off root tendrikls & stalk stumps, I spread the bulbs into one layer - in the shade - to allow the mud to dry on them. After brushing the dry soil off, I brought them into my house for curing. In a cool, dark room, I spread them again into one layer -checking & turning ~ every 3-4 days. The 2nd or 3rd week, I put teh bulbs into mesh pantyhose and hung them in the open closet area of that same cool.dark room. Every week or so, I would take this down and wriggle the bulbs around into a new position inside the hose, then re-hang. Continuing until late Sept, when I had them replanted. My temporary garden helper planted each bulp individually for 3 of the clusters: digging a hole, working in 1 tbs of granulated bulb food ~1 inch at the bottom of a 6 inch hole. (He loosely spaced each bulb in a cluster about 4 inches apart.) I was able to supervise the last cluster, a middle strip of daffodils with hyacinth on either side. (This is where the only bloom is.) I had him dig out the entire area to 4 inches deep, then dig out a middle strip another 2 inches. Again, he worked in the fertilizer, planted & covered the daffodil bulbs - then worked in fertiolizer for the hyacinth bulbs, planted and coveredd them. Done with the bulb planting, he watered (lightly) his newly planted areas.

I can't see what I did wrong or what step I might have missed ; please help me identify my error(s) so that these bulbs will be able to bloom next year and every year after that!

Seems like your procedure moving them should have worked.
You could dig a couple up and see if a visual might help solve the problem/check their health out.

@William might be able to help.
@gemini_sage as well.

Bet, it sure sounds like you did everything right. Were the bulbs growing in a shady area the first year? Typically deciduous trees haven't leafed out yet and aren't a problem for daffs, but if there is a structure or evergreens shading the area, that would be one possible explanation. I have had issues with a couple of varieties in an area where there are a lot of tree roots. Usually some tree root competition isn't a problem for spring bulbs, I think they can be helpful by usurping moisture during summer. But these 2 varieties, Pink Silk and Lorikeet, both dwindled away after the first year. I was able to save Pink Silk by moving it to a new spot, same bed, further from the tree in a spot with more sun. Lorikeet completely died out. There are other daffs in that bed growing happily among the tree roots, so it seems some varieties are just more tolerant of various conditions than others.

Dutch Master is usually a tough one that can tolerate a lot of conditions, so your experience is puzzling.

It sounds a bit odd to me as well. I do wonder about the bulb size, perhaps they were too small to flower again? Did you measure your bulbs? It may sound a bit geeky but it can be very interesting to measure bulbs. I do this all the time with my tulips and I imagine I'll learn something from the process, or perhaps I just think it's fun .

Some other possibilities:

Storage in the same room as fruit or rotting bulbs and similar could destroy the buds inside the bulbs because of the ethylene gas.

Narcissus bulb fly - they eat the buds from the inside, but normally the foliage would be spindly and grass like. Still it doesn't hurt to dig a few bulbs as already suggested by jmorth and visually inspect them for any sign of trouble - narcissus bulb fly or otherwise.

Lack of proper vernalization - but I'd assume this would be very unlikely for your zone???

The fertilizer you applied in the autumn has no impact on this years bloom as everything was already formed inside the bulb, so we can rule it out. It's not a factor.

For this year I'd suggest watering your bulbs if the spring is very dry and overall trying to keep the foliage growing for as long as possible as that will give you bigger bulbs. If you feel it's necessary to lift the bulbs for summer, you could try storing them in some dryish sand or soil, perhaps outside in the shade under an overhang and see if that makes a difference - while this isn't what the commercial bulb grower does, it can be a safer method at home as the temperature will be more even in the sand/soil and there is no risk of bulbs drying out too much. Doing so would allow you to rule out improper storage - even if it does sound like you have done everything right. A little moisture during summer will not hurt the bulbs in my experience, just as long as it's not soaking wet.

Just keep an eye on the basal roots as they may start to grow earlier than what you think in a moist media and they should ideally be planted before that happens. Observing the roots will tell you the natural yearly rhythm of your bulbs. Here daffodils start to grow roots in August, at the same time the foliage may persist into July, so there isn't very much summer rest to speak of!!!

responses to questions:

vernalization - I assume you mean season-type stuff. This area has all four seasons, in abundance! If you ask me, I'd say Mother Nature goes well overboard with the weather-seasons thing!!

dry spring - you've GOT to be kidding!! There's a rain shower almost every day!!! An hour here, 2 there, all day sometimes, intermittent . . . spring is when the WORMS try to come inside to keep from drowning!

bulb storage - inside (in my bedroom, so NO food or drink!! ) @ 70 degrees and rather stable humidity versus outside ~ 80-90+ and VERY high humidity (even in the scarce shade)

narcissus bulb fly - I don't think so, as I've not seen the adult fly and the daffodil fronds are their usual, mature height - just absent any budding stalk.

location - first spring (blooms galore) all the bulbs were together in the same area (they were SUPPOSED to be the final stage of my unsuccessful attempt at lasagna layering bulbs. The area might have had roots from the unleafed-out decidoius tree, but I separated them into 4 ddistinct clusters because of the experimental failure. (each different type bulb was separated into their own, individual areas.) THIS spring (only one bloom) the 4 daffodil clusters were in the same flower bed, but well-away from that decidous tree and its possible problem-causing roots.

bulb measuring??? How?? These were good-sized bulbs, golf-ball size or bigger, most with one quarter- half-dollar sized daughter bulbs (which I left attached, as the "net said they'd fall apart when they were ready).

FYi re my bulb curing - these daffodils were the second year I've dug/cured/re-planted daffodil bulbs. ~8 dif varieties, all bloomed. At THIS bulb-curing session, I also cured hyacinth (all bloomed). . . so I'm not looking at my bulb-curing technique.

To prevent another bloomles spring, should I fertilize their areas with granular bulb & flower food or bone (blood?) meal (the one by Espoma is what I have, recomended for bulbs).

I'm not sure I understand why you dug them up. As for what went wrong, I planted DM a couple of years ago and they bloomed profusely the 1st year and hardly a bloom the 2nd. Year 3 no blooms.

>>>>narcissus bulb fly - I don't think so, as I've not seen the adult fly and the daffodil fronds are their usual, mature height - just absent any budding stalk.

I would not rule out the bulb fly just based on that!
The maggots feed over the winter, so you wouldn't necessarily notice in the fall at planting. The main bulbs can be mush inside and the daughter bulbs can send up normal leaves and no bloom (because they're too small/young). I do have a real problem with the fly. But I see mostly normal leaves, few blooms.
I dug up a bunch of daffs last spring where I was redoing an area --it was during bloom time (how rude of me). I ended up throwing more than half of them away because they either had a big fat maggot in them when I broke them open to see what the heck-- or signs of one. Interestingly, the nasty bulbs had no leaves, they were just down there being nasty maggot farms and the only leaves above ground were from unaffected bulbs and were normal.
//just saying

could be something else entirely, but it might be worth a check to see whatever you can see