Up here in Hokkaido, the daffodils finished just a few weeks ago, but the stalks are still green and strong.
I have a big row of mini daffodils and grape hyacinths that have finished and are falling everywhere.
I know the bulbs have to regenerate, and I can cut the spent flower stalks off, but that is a right pain because we are talking thirty feet or more of them. So can I simply chop off the leaves to say six inches high, so they can build up their nutrients, or will that kind of chopping cause them to try to make new leaves, thus exhausting themselves??
I am wanting to tidy up the borders! Help me please!
If they finished a few weeks ago you should be fine to chop them off. I believe you’re supposed to wait until the leaves start to turn a little yellow, as that means the nutrients in them have been returned to the bulbs, but in practice I’ve never had a problem with chopping them back 4-6 weeks after the flowers have gone over. They won’t try to sprout new leaves, but you may slightly weaken the plants over time if you do it every year.
In the long term, you’ll damage the bulbs. In the short term, you can get away with it – but next year’s display won’t be as good as this year’s, and the following year’s will be more anemic still. All of the leaves feed all of the bulb, and you should let the bulb get as much nutrition as you like.
If the foliage really bothers you, you can do what the Dutch do with tulips, and treat them as annuals – pull up the whole thing and discard it after bloom. Seems like a waste to me, but there you go.
I don’t want to damage the bulbs - I only just put them in last autumn and I’d like them to last for years. I will content myself with snipping off the spent flower heads and just tidying up around them. It will take longer but actually they don’t look too bad as the bigger herbaceous stuff is beginning to grow up and overwhelm them, which was the plan.
I leave them full length for a month after flowering and then cut them off to 6 to 8 inches tall. I do this so I can have other flowers during the summer. The daffodils multiple and grow enough to need dividing every 3 years, while having large flowers every spring.
Also, a classic thing to do (for next year, maybe) is to interplant the daffodils with daylilies. Daylilies leaf out, start to bloom, and cover up the daffodils just as the daffodils are fading, so the droopy dying foliage is disguised.