So...who enjoys gardening?

[Marianne]

4 1/2 ft lizards would be a dealbreaker for DH. He hates anything reptilian. They are carniverous from what you said about the squirrel escaping them-yes?

[DragonLady]

4 1/2 ft lizards would be a dealbreaker for DH.

When he was about four, my son brought me a "gift" hidden in his hand.  I held out my hand to take it from him, and he carefully placed it in my palm.  I looked at it for a moment...and it s-l-o-wly dawned on me it was a baby gila monster!

I said "Oh, Sh*t!", turned my hand over and dropped it.

He has never forgiven me!       



P.S. -it wasn't hurt.  It just ran away.

[quidscribis]

Yeah, apparently the monitor lizards are carnivores.  They'll eat rats and squirrels, I think, but not my fat cat Oberon.  They apparently eat all manner of bugs and are responsible for keeping slug, snail, grasshopper, mosquitoes, and whatnot populations down.

We saw one crossing a busy road a couple of weeks ago, stopping traffic as everything drives around it.  But that's pretty common here, although it's usually cows, dogs, and water buffalo stopping traffic.

Eh.  It sure ain't Kansas anymore, Dorothy.

[kath]

My peonies all species and trees are blooming.  Several I grew from seed.  Some peas are up.  i watered the raspberries and the garden today.  but mostly working on my book.  I want it out the door by Friday.  so I can work on my on line ethics class.

[BetsyV]

I wish I had peonies! What I DO have are mostly still in the light table, my vegetable and flower seedlings for this summer's garden. Outside, the first row of peas is about 3" tall and the second went in today. I have a row of green beans in and now a full row of radishes of two kinds - one my mom brought back seeds from her trip to Italy in March. She also brought back "rocket" greens seeds and eggplant seeds, two types. I got them kind of late to start but am keeping my fingers crossed that once the plants are set out they will catch up to the other plants and produce fruit for me. I also planted out scallion and shallot seeds, and I think they are finally starting to appear, but it could be weeds, too. It's hard to tell at this stage. Even my rhubarb plant is only a foot tall.

I transplanted the pansy seedlings into big pots for the front steps today, but we have a frost advisory tonight so they will go into the garage for the night. We still have a few days before we pass the average last frost date, so I think I will wait until after the 15th to set out the tomatoes, peppers, eggplants etc. Only in the last week or so have the nights consistently stayed above 40 degrees.

Sometimes I get frustrated waiting for spring in New England - it seems to take its sweet time, and then, suddenly, it's summer!

Betsy

[mardel]

I wish I had peonies too,  I must get some sun gardens.  The one peony I had, a tree peony with beautiful yellow blooms was in the one sunny place near the house.  It did bloom last year but looked sad.  This year it has refused to come up so I suspect it is gone.  It was 20 years old but I think several years of men with heavy boots trampling far to near to it did it in. 

I have to dig up that whole half of the front yard as it looks very sad and is mostly packed clay, except for a couple of very small areas.

The jack in the pulpits are up now though.

[Liana]

The Lily-of-the-Valley are blooming beautifully!  I just love them, they're so shy and sweet.  Most of the iris are blooming, and the pasque flower is still flowering, as long as I deadhead regularly.  Our peonies look to be on track to bloom by, or probably before Memorial Day.  Someone was wondering how to move peonies.  I've done this, and it's one BIG job, as I swear they have roots to China.  I had one I moved come back in the original spot too, and even bloom.   It was the peony that wouldn't die, or something.  Mardel,  I've never had a peony tree, but my Mom has one, and the neighbor kid used to mow it off regularly, and sometimes drive over it, but he moved away, and it slowly recovered, and is now gorgeous every spring.  You may not want to wait that long, though.

[mamafitz]

i worked on the garden this weekend.  filled more bags with lawn waste (leaves, etc.  i need to get a compost heap started).  we bought two climbing roses, so i planted those.  a friend gave me some bee balm, asters, iris, and some yellow flower that she couldn't remember the name of.  the iris i had planted last year is shooting up buds, and the peonies i moved look good.  i think only one will bloom, but they all look healthy.  calvin and i planted some carrots, and we found a nest of baby bunnies!  that has been fun, and he's always going to check on the babies.  he wants to feed them too, but i told him to please let the mama bunny do that.  i see her in the yard right now.

on the north side of the house i have hardly any area to plant.  the lily of the valley are up, but not blooming yet.  the bleeding heart is up (it was from my gramma who died in 1993), and my little japanese fern is up (i think that's what kind it is).  i love that fern, it's so pretty.   

i also pulled a ton of garlic mustard.  today i am going to call a garden store here and order a bunch of mulch.  slowly slowly slowly it's coming along!

[DragonLady]

I use my woody lawn waste to make mulch.  I grab a big bucket, put on my gloves, and use little hand clippers to trim it into 2" lengths.  It takes about 20 minutes to fill the bucket, and less than a minute to use it up.

I find it really relaxing -I can sit and chat and watch the birds...while saving the gas money for the 80+ mile trip to the garden center. 

[Jeanne]

My kids put down mulch for me on Saturday.  Daughter's boy friend picked up two trailor loads (14 scoops) for us.  They started at 1:30 and were done by 6.  Hubby figured it would have taken the two of us at least 12 hours plus 10 trips to the nursery to get 1.5 scoops at a time in our little pick-up.  Son and daughter in law; daughter and boy friend; hubby and the 9 year old granddaughter all helped.  The four year old granddaughter carries several trowelfuls.  The five month old granddaughter just kind of rolled around on her blanket and watched the fun.  I have a part-time weekend job at a winery and was scheduled to work a private Kentucky Derby party so I missed the fun.  But I did bring them their favorite wine for supper.

My beds look great now.  I am pretty much done planting for this year.  Our average frost free date is April 15 and most people around here consider somewhere around May 8-15 to be the  frost free date.  We put in four new landscape beds kind of on the corners of the front yard this spring; I planted my six tomato plants and several herbs; and we dropped in some annuals in the backyard border and around the water garden.  Yesterday we planted a few things at Son and Daughter-in-law's house.  She plans to order mulch today.  We pulled some old Yews out in front of their house this spring and discovered Lily-of-the-Valley struggling beneath them.  We interplanted them with some Columbine and I think they will all take off this summer with no competition from the Yews.

A lot of our late spring/early summer flowers are blooming early this year.  My peonies are in bloom and they shouldn't be for a couple more weeks.  Mardel, I would gladly trade you some sun beds for your shade beds.  We have very little shade at this house and I miss my Lily-of-the-Valley; Ferns; Hostas; etc.  I have found that I can slip some shade lovers into the bog area at the edge of the water garden and get them to survive in full sun but it doesn't work for everything.  My next house will have shade.  And this one will someday (about the time I move away) because of all of the trees I have planted.  But they aren't doing too much good, yet.

[mardel]

Oh wow, our last frost free date is a few weeks off yet.  The lilies of the valley are peeking up as are the hostas, some are up some are just showing a little bit through the top of the soil.  The Irises are starting to form buds although it seems a little earlier than usual for them. 

When I start to dig up that part of the front yard I will move the tree peony's root ball, if it looks at all viable and hope for the best.  I have a couple of other flower beds that I have to build first so it will be left in peace for a while.  Then perhaps I can start on some sunny areas.  If we ever finish getting the deck built, we are back in planning stages, due to the difficulty of the site on that half of the property, I will have some areas for sunny and very hot, flower beds on the west side of the house.  I actually don't mind the shade.  I love different textures and shades of green so shade gardening can be fun.  But sometimes I just want bright, gaudy, colorful flowers.

[BetsyV]

Mardel, I was jealous about your irises being so far along when you are otherwise behind us in the Boston area. Mine have now sent up their flower spikes - I snipped half a dozen today to add to my mother-in-law's Mother's Day bouquet.

Otherwise, it's rain rain rain for us.    We are in our 5th day with 7 to 10 more coming. We had a dry winter and April and were 5" behind, but this is getting depressing!

I wondered if anyone has an opinion about whether or not I can go ahead and put out my tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and cosmos. The tomatoes and cosmos are too tall for the light table now. My concern is the rain breaking the plants off. I have tomorrow and Tuesday off work  - I don't mind getting muddy myself, as long as the rain pauses for a couple of hours. I also haven't been able to have the plants outside much for hardening off. We had a couple of sunny weekends but last weekend was too windy to leave them out - I tried and the tall ones all laid down in the wind, so I put them back in the light table. I can afford to lose a few tomatoes, but would rather not lose any peppers or eggplants. I don't usually start too many of those. I ALWAYS start too many tomatoes 

On the plus side, the peas love this weather, the beans are up, and the radishes, scallions, & shallots are all up too. The happiest plant, though, seems to be the rhubarb. It's at least 2' across and now has a daughter plant coming up about 18" away.

Keeping fingers crossed for a break in the rain,

BetsyV

[Gorgeous Things]

I had asked DH for Hydrangeas for Mothers' Day.  I'm two towns over from Betsey V, and I didn't even want to try to go to the garden center until this storm clears out!  I'm not much of a gardener to begin with, other than tomatoes and cucumbers that I grow with the kids.

Ann

[Liana]

Betsy,  I'm not a vegetable gardener, but I do know that although you can plant in the mud, your plants will usually never quite "recover" from it.  It's just hard on them.  The ground compaction makes their roots air-starved, and they'll probably be kind of puny for quite a while; maybe forever.     Jeanne could give you the real low down on this, but I'd say stay out of the mud.

[BetsyV]

Liana - I hadn't even considered the soil compaction issue, probably because we are a lot of sandy soil and rocks here, mixed in with river bottom land, although it seems like it is river top land today. There is a lot of flooding on our North Shore area into southern NH today.

I will hold off as long as possible. Maybe a refinement of my light table will include making the shelves adjustable!

Betsy

[mardel]

Betsy, if it weren't raining I would go for planting, but Liana is right, the mud doesn't help.  I have flower spikes on my irises, which came up last week, when it was warm, and now they look like they are just sitting there being cold... they definitely don't look ready to open.

Our last frost date (average) is Saturday and I might be able to garden if it stops raining.  I have a bunch of daylillies that need replanting before the guys with the earth movers come.  They are supposed to come tomorrow, and they say the rain doesn't bother them, but I am a little worried about it.  I might just have to pot the daylillies up somewhere until I get them into a more permanent location.

[Jeanne]

Trying to work wet soil causes several problems.  If it is high in clay content compaction can be a real problem.  Clay has very tiny pore spaces and the individual clay particles hold the water very tightly on their surface.  That leads to too much water and too little air.  Roots must have oxygen to stay healthy (exceptions - water and bog plants but so few or those produce edible produce    Also water and bog plants are capable of extracting oxygen from water).  Wet soil also has a tendency to crust over, futher limiting oxygen exchange between the above ground atmosphere and the soil atmosphere.  The very act of digging a hole in wet clay will create something like a clay pot that will literally hold water.  I have seen people water a wilted plant but only complicate the problem because the roots are in standing water, sealed in by the compaced sides of the planting hole.  Was that at all clear as mud?  (Pun intended!)  Too much water can lead to wilting just like too little water.

Also if you work clay soil when it is too wet you will destroy the tilth and create clods rather than a nice grandular structure.  The soil will then have to go through a winter of freezing and thawing to break the clods down.  The best way to check for moisure content is to pick up a handful of soil and squeeze it into a ball.  If it crumbles between your fingers when you open your hand it can be planted.  If it stays in the ball, it is too wet to plant.

I wish I had a solution for planting during very wet springs.  Raised beds dry out faster than in ground beds but that isn't a solution this late in the season.  If you have an area that is always wet you can improve the drainage by adding organic matter, peat moss, manure, etc or by adding an aggregate like sand, perlite or vermiculite. 

If the forecast sounds like it may be a week or more before you can plant in the ground you might consider transplanting some of the largest plants into flower pots or nursery cans until you can get them planted in the ground.  Betsy, you can plant your tomatoes and cosmos much deeper than they are now growing.  The entire stem that is under under the soil surface will grow roots and the plant will do much better later in the season if it does turn off dry.    I sometime intentionally buy the tallest tomato plants in the store planning to bury all but the top two or three inches of stem.  That rule is not true for all plants, especially woody plants like trees and shrubs.  Never plant iris deeper than it was growing.

We seem to get about 1/4" of rain every evening but by the next afternoon we can plant and then the plants get nicely waterd in with that evenings 1/4" rain.

[BetsyV]

Jeanne - thank you for all the great info. I knew I could plant the tomatoes extra deep - my seedlings always end up really leggy, but I did not know that about the cosmos. I have resigned myself to waiting a week or at least a few days. I will probably just forego dinner one evening and go over to the garden and plant them after work. (The vegetable garden is the next town over, behind one of our small apartment buildings, about 3 1/2 miles away. We get no sun in the home yard.)

We have a lot of sand in the soil naturally and rocks (typical of New England), but in Waltham where the garden is, it is good river bottom land, silty as well as sandy down deep. (DH is just telling me we have 5' of sandy loam, best soil God ever made.  )  The Charles River was orginally a tidal river, and years ago, until WW2 or even into the 50s and 60s, there were truck farms within the city limits, only about 8 miles from Boston. The lot our apartment house was built on was part of one of those truck farms into the 1920's and 30's. Believe it or not, we still have an Agway in town, although I am not sure why or how!

The sun came out around 6pm today, and it seemed to clear out. Not sure how long it will last. Fingers crossed for a few days of sun, anyway.

BetsyV

[mardel]

Boy, Jeanne, you described my soil perfectly.  Clay, clay, clay.  Except in the raised beds and those areas that I have meticulously ammended.  I live on a pile of rock and clay, and the rain means that it will be some time before the soil is really workable to build and amend new flower beds.

It is slow work, but the areas that I have dug, redug, amended, and let sit, sometimes for some time before I am able to plant, as it takes any amendments and improvements a fair amount of time to integrate with the clay to make a new soil.  That's why I gave up on landscapers.  They wanted to dig a hole, dump in dirt, and leave the plant in its new "natural" clay pot.  The plants would grow until they hit the edge of that clay wall and then be stunted.  You can't pay people enough to do this work...you have to be a devloted and probably crazy homeowner.

Sandy loam...ahh the stuff of dreams.

[Jeanne]

I grew up on the north side of the Missouri River as it flows East through Missouri.  Good, BLACK, rich gumbo.  You had to be very careful about working it too wet!!!  I though the only rocks that you found in soil had been thrown off the gravel road.  Then I moved south and now live in what is considered the northern edge of the Ozarks: 3 parts rock to 1 part soil and that soil is 95% clay.  Several years ago my dad sent me some plants in a container of his native soil.  I was dividing and transplanting them at school and a couple of my students were fighting over who got to take home the soil from Daddy's containers.

I'm at school right now, on a break from cleaning out the greenhouse.  I'm leaving tomorrow for three weeks and want to leave a clean greenhouse for my helpers while I'm gone.  I wish you guys were closer, you could have hauled away some of my 'give aways' this morning.  I have dumped tons of soil and plant material into a dump truck this morning.  If I don't go back NOW, I won't be able to move.

[Liana]

Jeanne,  I had to laugh at your students fighting over the "good stuff"!   I too have had to amend my soil considerably since it's pretty much straight clay here under a thin layer of topsoil, and I'm very lucky, as we have farms, and so I have spent a lot of time over the years bringing in good dirt by the bucketful.  I can get nine 5-gallon buckets in the back of our SUV per trip, and have made many trips like this since I began gardening.  I do have to deal with weeds that sprout in this soil, but I recognize them as such when they are very tiny, and they're easy to get rid of then.  DH knows where the best soil is, and that's where I get it.  We're lucky to have some deposits of the very best soil apparently, as well as not-so-great soil, of course, but naturally, I take the really good stuff.   Clay is actually very handy to have as a component, as it does hold water so nicely, and when things are really drying out, if the roots are down to clay, or it's incorporated into the upper layer nicely, your plants won't dry out nearly as quickly.  We grow dryland corn and beans, and last summer we went over 2 months without rain, and the differences in types of soil in different fields was very noticeable as a component in how the crops did.

I have also worked bales of sphagnum peat into my beds over the years, and some sand as well.  I don't do this much anymore, as it seems to be pretty good by now.  I used to plant things with a combination of dirt, sphagnum and sand to fill the hole, which worked well for me, and helps to keep the incorporation of good materials going.  I don't have a compost pile, as such, but I rake all our leaves to a narrow strip between a hedge and a fence, and let them just do their thing.  When I dig there, it's amazingly lovely, and even better, I haven't had to bag the leaves and haul them out!   

I feel very sorry for people who buy a new home around here and try to grow things, as many developers sell off the topsoil and leave the poor homebuyers with nothing but clay!  There was an uninformed councilperson here a few years ago who was complaining that she couldn't grow anything at all, because she was in a new development, and it had been a field previously, and the farmer had just "ruined the ground" by growing crops.   Needless to say, the farmer probably improved the soil while he was using it, and certainly wasn't the one who had the topsoil trucked away!  Many people thought she had really figured out what the problem was, though.

[zippianna]

That's really rotten, that they would sell off the top soil.    What bums!  We are on the scrape side of the housing development and fifty years later( and lots of compost later) we actually have a decent planting ground.  We've lived here 35 years and were the only ones to make improvements in the soil.  I love my garden, rock and a bit of a hill, but I still love it dearly.

[Jeanne]

I use lots and lots of miniture donkey manure and newspapers.  A guy down the road raises the mini-donkeys and he is very happy to scoop up a front-end loader full of manure and dump it into our pick-up.  Newspapers make such a difference in the soil structure and also work as a weed barrier.  We have lived in this (new) subdivision for five years and my flower beds NOW have lovely soil.  But not so for my neighbors!!  This was a timber area so the top soil was not as deep as it would have been in a paririe.  And we have exposed rock outcroppings.  Our water garden shapes were mandated by the presence of said rocks.  Two 50ish people can not move several ton granite boulders by hand.

Liana, the councilwoman's complaint was soooo funny.  In this area, if a pasture is left ungrazed for a few years Eastern Red Cedars come up and take over.  In another 50 or more years the oaks and hickories will start to grow among the cedars but it would take at least 100 years for the hardwoods to get big and thick enough to shade out the cedars.  I have a friend who owns a large greenhouse in West St. Louis County.  For years they were considered "out in the boomies".  But as St. Louis had grown west, their area has become subdivided.  The area recently incorporated into a city and the city council passed a law that home owners can not cut down trees.  Most of the trees are Eastern Red Cedar!!!!! not hard woods!!!!  My friend went to the council meeting and tried to explain that it would be better to let the homeowners rip out the cedars and plant hardwoods, but the council members kept saving, "No, we don't want to spoil the natural look."  My friend pointed out that 150 years ago, when that area first settled it would have been prairies and hardwood forest with cedars only at the fringes.  He finally gave up!  Of course the council would also like the city to be ALL residential, no industry so his greenhouse is already in violation.  But since his family has had a greenhouse in that location for over 50 years the city can't force them out.

Sorry, I got so windy.  Uninformed elected officials just get my goat sometimes!!

[DragonLady]

Jeanne, I just tear the newspaper into strips and add it to my compost.  But it sounds like you have a different way to use it?

[Liana]

Jeanne,  Yes, we have people like that here, too.  They don't want any industry, but of course they want the taxes that industry would pay.  We have cedars that pop up like clockwork in any idle land, or pastures after a few years if they're not mowed regularly.  It's pretty hard to get a burn permit for a field anymore, but once in a while someone gets one.  There's an older lady who lives next to a farm of ours, and she's always burning her ditches and along a creek, or anywhere.  It often gets away from her, but everyone's sort of used to it.  Her daughter once told us "Give Mom a box of matches and she's happy for a week."  It's funny, but of course she's never burned up anything important, just her own pasture, and I guess if you can't burn up your own pasture, what can you do?   

Trees are pretty sacred here, too, and (speaking as a lifelong prairie dweller) the main idea seems to be to block all sight lines, if possible.  I guess I expect to be able to see around and/or between the trees to the horizon most of the time, or at least often.  How would you know what weather was coming otherwise?

Zippi,  I agree that they shouldn't sell the topsoil and then expect people to live there, but they seem to have realized that it's another source of income for them, and most people don't know the difference, or don't find out until it's too late anyway.  That's one reason they sell topsoil in bags, I guess, and probably where they get it.

[mamafitz]

i have a peony question -- my peonies look pretty good, especially the one that wasn't moved.  it has a nice amount of buds on it.  my question about that one is should i pinch off the buds that form below the main bud?  did that make sense?

also, i was just out there putting something in the sandbox, and noticed that some of the little peonies (i can't even call them a bush, they have something like 1-3 stems!) look like they are 'burned'.  just a leaf here and there, not the whole bush, not even half or a third of it.  is that some sort of disease or is it because they got moved?  they are mulched with red cedar.

tuesday calvin and i planted some tomatoes and some watermelons.  we're trying carrots again (the one row we seeded got nibbled on right away!).  this weekend, either sunday or monday, my mother and i are going to go over to her duplex and thin out everything, then bring a bunch of stuff over here.  yay!  the iris are in full bloom, and dh promised to help me get my rain barrels set up by monday. 

[Liana]

I never pinch buds off peonies.  They will open what they want to open, and any extras will "blast" (just kind of shrivel up.)  The burned-looking leaves on the others could be stress from the move, but peonies can get botrytis, which kind of looks like that.  It's a fungal thing, and it isn't terribly serious unless it gets very bad.  Fungicide will help, and be sure and clean up all the foliage that has that, as the disease over-winters in the soil.  Iris can get it too, although I don't know if they get it from each other.  I'm not sure it does much good to remove the infected foliage now, and you certainly don't want to kill the bush by removing all the leaves and stems anyway.  So, I think I would call a local nursery and ask them what they recommend in your area.  Sounds like your garden is growing by leaps and bounds!

When Jeanne gets back, she can tell you, I'm sure, but I thought I'd try, since she's gone for a few weeks.

[kath]

I repotted plants all day.  It was cool outside.  It is supposed to rain tonight.  I wanted to get all the potbound ones repotted before i leave to Baltimore , MD for a week to interpret and SSP at the Deaf/ Blind conference.

[Jeanne]

I'm back, well almost back.  We are still about 250 miles from home but will be there tomorrow.  Three weeks is too long to be gone.  We will have driven 5000 miles when we get home.

As far as the peonies go.. I am going to guess the problem is transplanting.  They will probably come out of it but don't expect mush more growth from them this year.

I also never pinch off the peony buds.  Nature has a way of self pinching if necessary.

We have had a great trip and I have seen some wonderful gardens and arboretums.  I'll give you a bit of a review later.

Kath, your comment reminded me of a t-shirt I saw in a botanical garden gift shop.  It said "I'm not old, I just need repotting".

[BetsyV]

After what seemed like 5 or 6 weeks of rain, I finally was able to spend some time in the vegetable garden today, pulling weeds  , planting cucumber and melon seedlings.

I signed up for and started a photo album at Yahoo today, and put up a few pics of my 12' x 35' urban plot from today. I am hoping to get the hang of it enough to upload more from earlier this spring (the seed starting area and early plants) and also do a sewing photo album, too, post pics of my most recent projects and whatever I choose to do next.

I work on a computer all day all week, you'd think I could have figured this out quickly, but getting the link to embed was baffling me ... 

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/betsyv59/album?.dir=59e5re2&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//photos.yahoo.com/ph//my_photos

BetsyV

[zippianna]

I've really enjoyed this topic and all the pictures and sharing of flower and vegetable enthusiasms.  I love gardening and my garden, and in the past it's been very productive, both for food and for flowers.  We used to grew at least half our produce, winter and summer.  Chinese long beans and even Luffa sponges made their way into it.  Now because we are hit with water restrictions from one season to the next, a lot of the lush old garden is dead and gone.  DH retired last August and we are still trying to figure out all that we want to do with the whole thing.  Happy gardening!  And thanks for the inspirations, too.

[DragonLady]

I got a pot of hyacinths for my birthday.  The flowers are gone now, but the leaves are still green.  Does anyone know what I should do with these to make them grow again next year?  Should I save the bulbs, or transplant them, or what?

[Liana]

Usually forced bulbs won't grow, but you might as well try planting them the same as any other bulb, and just figure that anything you get is a plus.    If it still has foliage, don't cut it off.  I assume you get enough cold for bulbs without pre-chilling? 

[DragonLady]

I assume you get enough cold for bulbs without pre-chilling? 

I don't know.  I planted some tulips one fall, but they never came up -don't know if wasn't cold enough or if they just succumbed to bunnies or what.

[BetsyV]

DL

It might not get cold enough where you are for bulbs like tulips and hyacinths to over-winter in the ground. We lived in the Richmond VA area for a couple of years, and everyone there who wanted tulips and hyacinths, any bulb except daffodils, had to dig them up in the fall and keep them in the freezer over the winter. Many of the bulbs want to experience sustained temperatures well below freezing. Varieties of daffodils seem to be less fussy about the cold treatment. It could also be too dry; you are in central Arizona, if I am not mistaken?

And you must let the foliage die back naturally. The foliage absorbing energy from the sun is what fills the bulbs with the energy to come up again in the spring.

It could easily be bunnies, too, although here in the northeast it's the skunks that eat the bulbs. Again, except the daffodils. They must taste bad, for a skunk that is. I wouldn't know from personal experience 

BetsyV