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Re: help: can i lift my daffodil/anenome bulbs now

Sativa Reaper wrote:
> 
> Hi all
> 
> I thought I would start with a brief introduction of myself.
> 
> My name is Trevor Hughes, and I live in Observatory, Cape Town -
> thats in South Africa :)  I am quite keen on gardening but fairly
> clueless.  I have only a small garden 8m x 2m in the front of my
> house that gets about half a day of full sun.

Dear Trevor 
I am shortly going on holiday and someone else has already give you a
pretty full answer, but I would just like to emphasise a few points. The
first is that your feeding would have been enough to carry a good crop
of mealies (Yes, I know the name, having been brought up in Kenya) and
has given you poor bulbs indigestion. You should be able to grow a good
crop of flowers over the summer using up the residual fertility and when
you come to plant the bulbs again I personally would not give anything
more except some compost (about a 1" layer) and perhaps a little
bonedust (which is a natural slow-release phosphatic fertilizer).
Superphosphate is admittedly quick-acting, but soon gets chemically
locked up in the soil, so its time of usefulness is very limited.

Regarding pulling up the daffodil bulbs before the foliage has died off
properly, you do risk the possibility they have not stored enough food
to flower the next season. Some people, if they want  the ground for
other things just find a sumnny corner somewhere in the property and dig
a trench into which they  put  the carefully-lifted bulbs to finish off
their growing, only storing them when the foliage has browned off
naturally.

Anemones are another matter. While they will flower a second season,
young bulbs give the best flowers and in most countries gardeners treat
them as throw-away plants, buying new ones each season.

Moira
-- 
Tony & Moira Ryan <theryans@xtra.co.nz>
Wainuiomata (pop 18K), suburb of Lower Hutt City (pop 140K),
satellite of Wellington City (pop 500K), New Zealand (pop 3.5M)
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