The Mathematics of Bulbs

A daffodil bulb, planted, blooms and after the blooms wilt, the plant continues to create energy (and protein) from the leaves to make new bulbs underground.

Do not trim or mow the leaves. Leave the leaves intact and let them wilt.

You can mark the bulb’s spot with a thin short stake.

In the late fall, dig out the bulb and find three new bulbs have been produced. Where there was one bulb there now are four.

If you had planted a dozen bulbs, you now have 48. Call it 50.

Transplant the bulbs so that this fall you have fifty bulbs in the ground.

This time next year you will have 200 bulbs to plant, and the year after that, eight hundred bulbs. The next year three thousand two hundred.

Why aren’t we planting more daffodils?

Daffodils are a hardy plant, and often the first flowers in spring after a long winter. Plant them, and walk away; leave them alone; they defy dandelions for sunlight.

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Monday, March 10, 2025

So yesterday or Saturday I noticed that a daffodil had sprouted in a tub in the Living Room, ten-inch leaves – but indoors.

Yesterday afternoon David noticed that daffodils were so routing in my western bed. This bed I dug out to twelve inches, sieved the soil and did not get finished sieving, so last winter I planted tulips and daffodils as deep as I could in about three inches of soil; that’s three inches after the winter rains and snows got around to compacting the soil.

Here are some of the tiny pre-leaves and a bulb that was pushed up, perhaps by the frost.

I call them [re-leaves, usually a couple of finger-nail sized leaves that pop up and appear to do nothing for two or three weeks.

I think that they are sending data down to the bulb “The temperature today was so much”, and the bulb makes chart. Of course our daily maximum oscillates.

Here is this week’s forecast; last week involved several sub-zero days. Our predicted maxim oscillates, but within three weeks there will be evident a steady upward trend, and the bulbs seem to get the message to send up proper leaves, 20+ centimeters, followed a week later by stalks, and then a week after that, buds, …

The tips of these fingernails are tinged with yellow, as if they were itching to make hallow sun-bonnet blooms. This encourages me to yell at them “Grow!!”

The eastern bed is nit so good. This bed was not re-planted and I suspect that the bulbs are at their proper depth – four inches or so.

That suggests that my early-sprung western bed might end up getting trashed by a cold snap.

Across the street Kerry tells me that Jennifer’s bulbs are up, too. Here are some shoots from Kerry’s bed. These bulbs were planted in shallow holes carved into the rock-like clay (depleted of nutrients and texture by years of caring away the grass clippings)

So probably the same shallow depth as my western bed, but not a bed of sieved soil.

I now have three beds with different characteristics.

I plan to take a photo each week of the daffodils and record their growth, and of course, their survival.