Right off the top, daffodils are gorgeous! They're bright, they're cheerful, and they're one of the early signs of spring. Walking up to the flower patches during daffodil season is one of my favourite times - it's as if happiness vibrates from the flowers.
But especially important, deer don't eat them ;) In fact, there aren't any animals, who enjoy munching on my beautiful daffodils.
Unlike my poor tulips. The deer have quite enjoyed eating my tulips the last couple of seasons. Over the years I've noticed a few nibbles here and there, but spring 2024 something changed...
I went from happily wandering the gardens daily, checking on the early growth, to the heart stopping moment I realized hundreds of my tulips had been mowed down to the ground. It was pretty clear from the sheer number of plants eaten and the tell-tale footprints that the culprits were deer.
For the next month, I covered the tulips with frost cloth every night, then uncovered every morning, I sprinkled bone meal and blood meal on the ground, hung up clanging pie plates and wind chimes, put bars of soap around the gardens, installed motion sensor lights, and played a radio loudly all night. And it worked, the tulips survived! But I was exhausted.
The above picture was taken on an early spring evening. That particular deer snorted at me as I covered the tulips.
I gave tulips another try in 2025 (because they are so beautiful), hoping the deer had found somewhere new to eat. But it was 2024 all over again - freshly mowed down tulips in April, then the loud radio, bone meal, blood meal, wind chimes, and the daily covering and uncovering of the tulip rows. The tulips survived, but once again I was exhausted and something had to change.
I even considered giving up on spring flowers altogether, but just couldn't picture a spring season here without an abundance of flowers, so I invested in another 10,000 or so daffodils to fill most of the farm gardens. That's on top of the already 20,000 that were in the ground from previous years. I can't wait to share the daffodil magic this spring with you :)
First photo by Clarissa of goldenhourco.com
Second and third photos by me, Janet of Country Cut Flowers