Mukta Khairas Daffodils

Thursday, February 22, 2001,
Chandigarh, India

C H A N D I G A R H S T O R I E S

Vibrant daffodils smile
Tribune News Service

CHANDIGARH, Feb 21 — March brings breezes sharp and shrill, shakes the dancing daffodils —

How and where to grow When ready for growth, choose a well-drained, sunny place. Hillsides and raised beds are the best. Drainage is the key. Spade at least 12 inches deep and improve your clay with well-rotted compost, soil amendment or planting mix and raise the bed. Slightly acidic soil is the best. Plant the daffodils so that their top (pointed end) is at least two times as deep as the bulb is high. Plant bulbs deeper in sandy soil than in clay. Daffodils need lots of water while they are growing (but if being grown in dry hot climate, they should be meagerly watered). Even during the period of growth, wash the bulbs thoroughly and let them dry completely (at least a week, out of the sun). Put them in onion sacks and hang them in the coolest place you can find until November. Good air circulation will keep storage rot at a minimum.

The pleasure of watching this flower of the hills grow in your small backyard would indeed be great, and especially so if you have been nurturing the plant for a good five months. For Mrs Mukta Khaira, a Sector 8 resident who brought the bulbs when she returned from California in September, February 8 was a day of double celebration. One, her daffodil variety Angel’s Whisper bloomed after five months of sleeping, and two they bloomed on the day her grandson was born.

When this reporter went to her place to watch the colourful delight, Mrs Khaira talked about how the flowers had taken so long to bloom. “When I first planted the bulbs, there were no signs of growth till December. I thought they were dead, but slow watering helped and the first signs of flowering appeared in the first week of January,” she said.

On February 8, there were two flowers. Then four more. And after some more days there were 30. Apart from daffodils, Mrs Khaira also has iris and hyacinths in her garden. As for daffodils — even after they grew, securing them was not an easy job for her. As the flower cannot tolerate even a slight rise in temperature, the pots had to be shifted to shaded areas everyday. Now, however, they have started withering.

While the daffodil is essentially a low temperature flower, here is some information for those who want to grow them. The best source is the Northern California Daffodil Society which holds daffodil shows in March. You can write for their catalogues to them in late March or April and order and pay for the bulbs in April or May. Entire information on growing this flower is available at www.daffodil.org.

All about daffodils

* They are at least 25 species, some with a great many different forms and several natural hybrids. In addition to this, the Daffodil Data Bank lists 13,000 hybrids.

* Bulbs are priced from around $ 1 up to $ 100, depending on the newness or scarcity of a cultivator.

* Under good growing conditions, the daffodils should outlast any of us. Daffodils multiply in two ways: asexual cloning (bulb division) where exact copies of the flower will result, and sexually (from seed) where new, different flowers will result

* Flowering season of the flower is between six weeks to six months depending on where you live.

* Daffodils will grow in shade of deciduous trees because they have finished flowering by then and the foliage has begun to mature by the time deciduous trees leaf out.

More information about daffodils can be had from www.daffodil.org.