Planting Season Debriefing
Paper or Plastic ?
We stopped shipping in plastic crates this year, even though they are an indispensable tool in all things horticulture. UPS doesn’t want them on their line and penalizes accordingly. 45 pounds of bulbs in an indestructible plastic crate can do a lot of damage coming down the shoot. The cardboard crates are still pretty utile. Enough plastic already.
Cadeaux
The Dutch word for gifts comes from the French "cadeaux".
We have included some thank you bulbs, gratis, in each shipment. Most customers this year received several bulbs of Bobby Soxer An Alec Gray cross of N.rupicola and N.poeticus. Often compared to his wildly successful Sun Disc , but in our estimation freer and more colorful. Gets a late season teenage growth spurt. If you swoon like a Bobby Soxer over Frank Sinatra you will also swoon over this little flower.
Quality Control
Some daffodils are renowned troublemakers. We are aware. We grow them and list them anyway. We have issued a number of replacements, refunds and apologies this season. Hummingbird lived up to its reputation as a difficult cultivar. We also intercepted some truly horrid Intermedius, while other Intermedius bulbs were firm and viable. If you need adjustments for any other bulbs that are clearly not up to snuff, let me know.
Duchess of Westminster , 2 W-W before 1869. That’s a formidable two nose.
Given the number of cultivars we list, in a very wet year, Carlos and Jacqueline delivered the very finest bulbs. As they always do.
Substitutes
This year, we listed the Brian Duncan Jonquil Silver Dollar 7 W-W. But due to a problem in the nursery, none were available at harvest. Carlos selected a Brian Duncan white Triandrus “White Ocean” as an alternate to fill those orders. Here is where the cross (English) Channel confusion begins. An excerpt from Carlos’ explanation follows:
I’m glad you do like the new seedling instead of the Silver Dollar, once again apologies for the mistake I made. You did some good research on Daffseek, and you are right, the name should be / is Sandra’s Choice
The reason for this error is that Frankie Charlton applied for the name Sandra’s Choice in the UK at the RHS. But the guy who bought it from Frankie, my neighbor Ruud Weijers, applied for the name White Ocean in Holland at the KAVB. I found out about this after we shipped the bulbs.< So the name will most likely be Sandra’s Choice in the future, but Frankie and Ruud have to decide about that. Please do show it under the name Sandra’s Choice but if Frankie changes his mind (which I doubt) I will let you know. But it is one and the same variety, the seedling 3612 from Brian [Duncan].
The quickstep part was my mistake, always thought it was a quickstep seedling but indeed it is Hillstar x LittleBell
I hope Sandra’s Choice will do well for you and good to hear that the bulb quality was great, they had a long journey with a lot of delay.
I hope this clears things up. Until next spring I have no artwork of either of these daffodils, so I am including instead a picture of Ruud Weijers. Besides being a gentle and kind man, Ruud is a terrific daffodil grower and has an eye for truly great varieties, including Sweet Ocean and Yellow Ocean. Hence the Ocean series.
C.W. Harley
Huntington, CT.