14 BULLETIN 1270, U. S. DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE 
Daffodil bulbs, on account of their peculiar shapes, do not lend 
themselves well to mechanical sizing, especially to the round-per- 
foration sizer. In order to handle these in the latter at all it is al- 
most necessary that the roots he removed, which is a time-consuming 
task. 
To summarize, the tendency has been toward the use of a grat- 
ing sizer for daffodils and to make the separation into merchantable 
bulbs and planting stocks at the time the clumps are broken apart. 
In the last four or five years no roots have been removed from either 
the turn-off or planting bulbs. The handling at planting time is a 
little more difficult, but it is considered that the roots well dried 
down are an assistance rather than an injury to the bulbs in the 
pack. 
This discussion, or much of it, as will be readily realized, has no 
application in regions with very dry summers nor with Polyanthus 
culture in warm regions, for there the roots disappear. 
DRAINAGE AND SOIL PERCOLATION 
To produce daffodils successfully the water must get away from 
the plants quickly after a rain. Bad drainage, resulting from the 
configuration of the surface or nature of the soil, will spell disaster. 
Good stocks of Empress have been ruined on heavy plastic soil when 
planted in beds 50 feet long with open 2-foot ditches on the sides and 
across the lower end, even when there was a surface fall of 4 feet in 
100, but the drainage was 150 feet lengthwise of the plats. 
On the other hand, stocks have been known to succeed when under 
water for a considerable period on sandy soil where the downward 
percolation of the naturally well aerated water was rapid. Soil 
which produces grain or even vegetables well may not be suited at all 
to the production of narcissus bulbs because we are dealing here with 
a winter crop. To plant bulbs in autumn and let them take the 
conditions that obtain in the soil in winter is a very different thing 
from planting crops in the same soil worked up in the spring after it 
dries out sufficiently to be handled. In order for the soil to be suited 
to daffodil production it above all things must not be wet and soggy 
in winter, for it is then, more than in the spring and summer, that 
stocks suffer. The bulbs can not root in water. There is little dif- 
ference between planting in water and planting in soil so heavy and 
plastic that it is slow to let water through. This applies to the 
group in general, but it is not to be understood that the varieties 
all sillier alike tinder the adverse influence of poor drainage and re- 
tentive soil conditions. Scattered through this bulletin are ref- 
erences to varieties which suffer more than others from heavy soil 
and bad drainage. 
The early symptoms of lack of aeration in the soil caused by its 
excessive fineness or too much stagnant water are blackened outer 
coats of the bulbs, which later gradually disintegrate. This is fol- 
lowed by a blackening of more coals and a rotting away of the base 
in such an extent that the whole plate is destroyed. Then, of course, 
the whole bulb rots unless a fragment of the basal plate is left 
undecayed. On the approach of dry weather in summer such a frag- 
ment will round oil' and form a small but perfect and healthy bulb 
again in an endeai or to go on and grow the next season. 
