Welcome to our plant stories and an offshoot episode which is born out of my curiosity and ignorance, really. I realized I just don't know that much about daffodil bulbs. By the end of August, they will be appearing in garden centers and catalogues will be dropping through our letterboxes. Gardening magazines are full of them in the spring. But what is going on in July?

I think the first one we harvested, Ice King, was just over there. And then to our left, we're on a variety called Tamara, which is one of our bigger mainstock varieties, and that's what we're lifting at the moment.

I'm in a car with Ian Clark, marketing manager for Taylor's bulbs. It's a fourth generation family firm founded by a London pharmacist in 1919. Otto Augustus Taylor, born who had been gassed in the First World War, was unable to return to his previous profession in London. He applied for a government smallholding, a scheme set up for returning servicemen, and he moved to Lincolnshire to a house and four hectares of land. He began growing flowers and bulbs. Over 100 years later, the company farms over 750 hectares, has won over 30 RHS gold medals and has a royal warrant.

Just here on the left, this is a daffodil field, but these have only been in the ground for one year, so we're not harvesting those.

You can't just keep growing daffodils on the same piece of land. Think buildup of pests and diseases. There needs to be a crop rotation, so tailors also grow potatoes and sugar beet and wheat. We stop next to a field where they are lifting Tamara, one of the earliest flowering varieties. And the main thing you need to know is it's all about the circumference of the bulb. That's the key to understanding this process.

So the first thing we need to suss out is which way the wind's blowing because we don't want to be downwind of the dust, so it's blowing that way. Look to our right. So we'll walk down the left hand side and then we're not going to get covered in dust.

So tell me what's going on in this field. We're standing in front of a vast field and at the far end we can see tractors.

Yep. So we've got one with the lifter on and the lifter is a modified potato harvester and then we've got a trailer of bulbs just leaving. So in that trailer is 14 tons of daffodil bulbs, no Mostly soil at the moment, because, as you can see, and you'll see in a minute when we get closer, that the ground is so dry at the moment, that we have very big, what we call clods of soil. They're like asteroids, actually, at the moment. And so in that trailer, there's maybe two or three tons of bulbs and the rest will be soil at the moment, which is far from ideal. It's not what we want to be. We don't really want to be driving trailer fulls of soil around, but that's what we've been given this year with the harvest. So that 14 tonnes of soil and bulbs is just coming across to our left and that will be heading back to the main yard. And of course we want to leave as much soil as we can in the field, obviously. But then what we do take back to the yard, then the next job is going to be separating the bulbs from the soil. That's the first thing we're going to do when we get back to the yard. And we've also got Frank, who's driving the topper. So the topper literally is just bashes the top layer of soil and the remaining dead leaves and debris off before we harvest the bulbs.

So how long have these bulbs been in the ground?

So these are two year down. So they've been in the ground two years. These ones, that's our cycle of growing. They're in the ground for two years. Also, you'll notice that they're grown in ridges, so a lot like you would expect to see potatoes growing in the field. They're grown in ridges and we do that for two reasons. It works for the harvesting equipment, so the harvester can lift them easy, but also it keeps the bulbs out of the water. So growing them in ridges, when we do have heavy rain, the water sits in the bottom of the ridge and not. Not swamping the bulbs. Also, when it's hot, that ridge dissipates the heat through the soil better as well, rather than if they were just flat.

And are these all the same variety in this field?

In this bit we're in, they're all Tamara. But over to our right there's several other varieties, probably another 10 or 12 different varieties that we've already harvested.

I'm only pausing because I have so many questions about bulbs. But. But to go to the starting point, two years. So where to start in the cycle? What you're harvesting now, tell me. There'll be different sizes, they won't all be the same. Yeah, explain a little bit for me?

Yeah. So when we, when we lift the bulbs from the soil will get everything from a 7 to 10 centimeter circumference bulb up to a 16 plus circumference bulb. And when we get them back to the yard after a week or so of drying, we're then going to grade those bulbs and we're going to separate the sizes out. So bulbs are graded by the circumference of the bulb in centimeters. So when we get back, 7 to 10 centimeters, 10 to 12 centimeters, we'll keep them to one side and we want to use those as our planting stock for the next crop. The 12 to 14 and the 14 to 16 centimeters will be what we'll sell mostly to retail customers, garden centres. And then the 16 plus bulbs we also use for planting, because those 16 plus bulbs will have two, three, maybe even four daughter bulbs on and they'll produce new bulbs as well.

So in every field, every time you're cropping it, there is a big variety basically of what some are going to go back in, some are going to end up, we're going to be buying them, some we're going to buy in how long when you put those bulbs back, you plant them back, the 7 to 10 and the 10 to 12, how long before those bulbs will find themselves in the supermarkets or in the shops?

Yeah. So in two years time, we'd hope that a 7 to 10 would produce a 12 to 14 centimeter bulb that would be suitable for retailing and a 10, 12 would produce hopefully a 14, 16.

And how long can you use this field for daffodils?

So once the daffodils have been harvested, we wouldn't plant daffodils back in this field. It will be other crops for seven years before we come back into this field. If we were to keep planting daffodils on daffodils, year after year, you would get buildup of pests and diseases. So common pests that daffodils suffer with is small and large narcissus fly, where the fly will burrow up through the bulb, lay its eggs and then the grub will eat the bulb from the inside out and things like bulbworm as well. So we've got 1850 acres in total on the farm and at any one time about 350 of those will be daffodils because of that seven year crop.

Rotation you talked about. The soil we can see here. I mean, this is what you described just now, wasn't it?

Oh, you haven't seen anything yet.

Really?

These are Small asteroids.

I mean, this is like. I mean, if you pick one of these up, it is. It's the size of my hand, easily. And this is small.

Yeah, we'll probably find one the size of my head in a minute, I should think, when we see the lifter. But yeah. So this is the year we've had. So typically rainfall for our area is about 550 millimetres a year, and so far this year we've had between 120 and 130 miles of rain. So it's either going to be a very dry year or we're going to have a wet six months ahead of us.

That lack of rain is just huge.

So for daffodils, the critical time we want moisture is actually just after they've flowered. So if they're flowering in March and then they're starting to die back, we let all the foliage just die back naturally. So that period when that foliage is dying back, six or eight weeks especially, that's when we need rainfall for the bulb to swell up and grow before we harvest and we simply haven't had it.

So will that affect the sizes of these bulbs?

Yeah, so that's going to be two things. Look at the size of that. There you go. Look at that.

That is the size of your head, basically. Actually slightly bigger than the size of your head, to be honest with you.

Clods of soil. Yeah. So, yeah, the, the lack of moisture is going to be two things. It's going to affect the, the yield. So in, in commercial terms, the, the, the weight of bulbs that we harvest and it's in some cases going to affect the size of the bulbs. So, for instance, one of the varieties we lifted, we actually got lots and lots of size 1012 bulbs, not that many 12 14s and not really any 14 16s, which is unusual. So we have to adjust what we're doing when that happens.

And are some varieties better able to cope with this?

Absolutely. This year, the yields and the results from the harvest are very, very variable. Some varieties have actually done a little bit better than we expected, but then we've got others that have really, really suffered and. Yeah, haven't grown much at all in two years, to be honest, some of them.

So that will impact on what we buy, effectively, what we see to buy potentially over time as the. As climate changes.

Yeah.

And is that something you're kind of always slightly looking at and observing and watching as the climate changes, what that means for the plants that you grow?

Yeah, yeah. But actually also, chemicals is quite a big challenge for Us, because we had a lot of chemicals that we could use. Obviously, we don't want to be using chemicals when we don't need to, because they're expensive and we don't want to use them. But there was chemicals to combat, say, base rot, which is a disease that affects daffodil. And what we're finding is, as we're not able to use some of the chemicals anymore, some of the older, weaker varieties are actually really suffering now as a result of that. And we're going to have to change our program of what we're growing.

And there will be other varieties that you will be able to substitute.

Yeah. So at the moment we've got sort of a bank of what we'd call numbered varieties that aren't. They're not registered, they're not named, and we're building those up. And a lot of those newer varieties are stronger, they grow better, they yield better and they're more resistant to things like base rock.

So is that basically your breeding new daffodils?

We've not actually bred those ourselves, but we've bought stocks, small parts stocks, and then we're building them up over time, monitoring them as well. Some of the ones haven't actually done so well and we've decided not to carry on with them, but others have done extremely well and we're trying to build them up as fast as we can.

So you're looking ahead to five years or 10 years, presumably, and how long it takes to build the stock up to have enough to actually make that a commercial?

Exactly that, yeah. And then we'll. And then we'll look to name and register it and start trading. Yeah.

So we are now getting close up to the tractors.

Yeah, yeah. So they've stopped for some reason. Maybe Tea Break. I'm not too sure why they've stopped, but, yeah, they're all having a look, seeing what we're up to. That's Frank.

Hiya.

Morning.

Chatting with the guys like Frank who are lifting the bulbs. You get the challenges of this year.

Well, we have six months of solid rain and this lay totally underwater. So now it's dried out. It's literally like concrete. And I think as well, with it being so wet, a lot of the bulbs have rotted. So for yields, we're way down, aren't we, where we should be.

Yeah, certainly some varieties. Yeah.

But it's just. It's just incredibly hard work this year.

Have you seen anything this dry like this before?

We've had dry years, but I Think this is definitely the driest I've ever had as bad as this. But it's a combination of the wet winter and the dry summer. It's just come together. It's absolutely terrible.

Leaving the tractors to their work, Ian and I headed back to the main yard to find out what happens next to all those bulbs where luckily for us it was just lunchtime because it's a very noisy place to record.

This is the trailer that we saw leaving the field. 14 ton trailer. Too much soil in there at the moment for our liking. We'd prefer if there's more bulbs, more bulbs and less soil. But. So that's going to tip into this hopper here. Bulbs and soil a lot. And basically the aim of the game is to get as much soil out, out. Well, all of the soil out. At this stage, there's four guys stood on this inspection belt and they're picking off the biggest clods of soil, any stones, debris, anything like that at the first stage. Then they're going to go over a series of rollers here. They're like coils, that's to get more soil out. So you can see the split soil's dropping through those coils and coming off another belt. And that belt goes out of the shed up and into a trailer which we take the soil back to the field. Then there's a few bulbs as you can see on that belt that shouldn't be in there going out with the soil. Very small bulbs. So another couple of guys are there and they're just going to pick those bulbs off. So we make sure we catch everyone. So then up another belt to this red piece of kit here. Now this is a magnet. So this is magnetizing the moisture in the soil and not the bulb. So then the magnet at the other end is going to pull off the soil and leave the bulbs. That's the idea. And then a couple of guys here just stood picking any last bits of soil before they go up the elevator and onto the drying floor. The drying floor. So there's slatted wood here. This variety is tamara, so it's one of the biggest stocks that we grow. So we put that straight on the drying floor in the evening. That's going to blow warm air up through the bulbs just to dry them off. They'll sit there for a week before we then take them across to be graded.

You can see that getting bulbs out of the field and into our hands is quite a labour intensive process. And we're not done yet. We walk into another enormous shed so.

This is where we grade the bulbs. So after a week of drying, the bulbs would come in at the top of the shed, tipped into the hopper. We'll have two or three people stood on the inspection belt there. And they can pick any bulbs that have got damaged or, or any, any soil that slipped through, anything like that, bits of stone, anything like that they can pick off. And then they're going over a series of belts which are sort of set at different gauges. So the bulbs basically drop through depending on their size. So this variety we're grading at the moment is actually fortissimo. Fortissimo is a yellow orange flower, and it's actually a very big flower for a daffodil, and that's its characteristic. So you can see on the, on the bins that we're grading into the sizes. So 10 to 12 centimeter here, that's 14 to 16 centimeter. And then around the other side.

Oh, wow. This is like big in an aircraft hangar.

These are your 16 pluses. So planting start, 12 14s. And then your little tiddlers here, seven to tens on this one here.

And then we're looking at crates and crates and crates with oat.

Yeah.

What does. What are these?

So oat is Otto Augustus Taylor, of course. So that's, that's what that stands for. So on the back you can see a wooden wall. Now, that's actually what we call a letterbox drying wall. And we can blow warm air up through that wall. And you can see that the slots in the pallet bins line up with the slots on the wall, and that forces warm air through the bins and up through the bulbs to keep airflow and to continue to dry them.

So this is storage.

So, yeah, these bulbs will have been already graded, and these bulbs on the wall that you can see are our saleable stock. So what we're going to then pack to send out to our customers, to our retailers. And then we've already separated off the planting stock, which is in these square bins, and that will be actually outside, but still on a drying wall to keep it in the best condition before we plant them back.

So by this point, basically, you've harvested in the field, you've cleaned off all the soil, you've worked out which ones are going to be planted back, you've worked out which ones we're going to be buying.

Yep. Yeah.

Amazing.

Yeah. So we.

How many bulbs are in here, do you think? I mean.

Oh, well, each one of these bins, they're ton bins. There's actually not a ton of ton of bulbs in each bin. There's sort of 900-950 kg in each bin. And actually the bulbs are constantly dehydrating. So when we grade them, there might be 950 kilos in that bin, but that's going to reduce. That weight is going to go down as. Because they're going to dehydrate as. As they go. And that's natural. There's nothing that's normal. But obviously, obviously, if bulbs have been in a garden centre for months and come January or February, they're still in there, they're going to have dehydrated to a point where they're no longer actually viable.

I was going to ask you about that in terms of what's the ideal way to store bulbs, then, when we buy bulbs.

So generally airflow is key. So when you. If we go in any of our other sheds, you'll see there's fans everywhere. And the trays we use and the storage we use is all designed to get maximum airflow through the bulbs. If you get stagnant, damp air around the bulbs, then you're going to get mould and problems, problems occurring. Our sort of basic rule that we tell our customers is if you're comfortable, comfortable and it's okay for. For a bulb, if you're too hot, then it's probably a bit hot for the bulbs as well.

That's a really good way of thinking about it, rather than thinking it has to be very cold or it has to be.

No, no, no. So some. But with. There is. So say in the summer, flowering bulbs, dahlias, actually, they like to be stored quite cold. So we would store them at 8 or 9 degrees and they actually like. They don't like airflow. If you get lots of airflow around dahlias, it actually dries them out too quickly. But then, for instance, gladioli, they like to be stored warm. So even in January they prefer to be stored warm. Horses for courses.

We wandered through the packing room, the final stage, where the bulbs drop into the netted bags, back out into the yard, where I asked Ian about moving marketing daffodils. Some, perhaps the older generation have always loved them and grown them. But is there a new generation to be reached?

Yeah, I think it's things like how and where to grow them that people need to understand. So, for instance, naturalising daffodils in grass, a lot of younger gardeners wouldn't know that you can do that. But when they realize that they Think it's quite amazing, really, that you can lift some turf up, plant these bulbs under the grass, put the turf back and then you're going to get bulbs, the flowers coming up through the grass. But not only that, they're going to come back year after year and they're actually even going to spread. So you plant five bulbs and in two or three years time you're going to have 10. So that's really good. I think the other thing that we find is a trend at the moment is the flowering times. So people. We do a collection bag called Five Months of Daffodils. So people don't understand that you see a yellow daffodil in flower, but actually if you pick your varieties, you can have them in flower from January all the way through to May with different varieties and you can have a succession of flowers. That's quite a quirk that people don't necessarily realise, but when you explain that to them, they want to do that.

Do you have a favourite daffodil?

That's a bit like asking me what my favourite child is. I can't really answer it, can I? It varies. So what I tend to do is I'll go out in the field in the spring and I'll see something that may be a different flowering stage to when I looked last year. And then I'll. So this year it was Barrett Browning, which is a white with an orange centre. And that one just really. I just caught it on the perfect day. It looked absolutely stunning. And that one, that was this year's Barrett Browning. But it'll be a different one next year.

I am definitely going to look at daffodil bulbs in a different way this year. And thanks to Ian Clark of Taylor's Bulbs for so patiently explaining the process to me. If you want to hear a plant story about daffodils, then you can listen to episode one of this third series to Constance's story about being part of a team team that planted a million bulbs. Yes, I did say a million. That were gifted to New York by a Dutch bulb grower after 9 11. You'll find all the episodes wherever you find your podcasts or on the website ourplantstories.com where you'll also find the weekly blog about this podcast. Our Plant Stories is an independent podcast, researched, produced and presented by me, Sally Flatman, and supported by you, the listener through Buy Me a Coffee. The link is in the show notes, so thank you.