Why you should wrap your daffodil leaves in rubber bands after the bloom is done

One thing that I've known for a very long time, and yet never seemed to be able to do, was to let the leaves of your daffodils to die back naturally, in order to put energy back into the bulb for next year's bloom. That is, if you trim off the leaves, which I've too often done, you mess up the plant's chances for having wonderful blooms the next year. Yeh, I know that, but every year at this time I've kept snipping, just because I hated looking at the leaves flopping over and turning brown. But this year I think that I've finally got it right, and it's done with rubber bands, and annual flowers.

After you've cut off the blooms, and when the leaves start flopping over, gently roll them up and put a rubber band around them. Then your annual flowers will cover that up, and you don't have to look at the fading daffodil foliage. It will turn brown, and then all you gotta do is remember to go pick up the rubber bands. Or you can leave them there, they'll be under the annuals, and you'll see them when the annuals die, here in Phoenix as the heat comes on (in about a month from now).

Unfortunately, my annuals don't quite reach to where the tied up daffodil foliage is this season, so I'm not quite there yet. They'll cover it in a couple of days! Next year I'll plant the annuals earlier, and closer to the bulbs so that the rubber-banded bundled daffodil leaves never show. There's always next season for things to get better! That's one of the things that I love about gardening.

I'll let you know how it goes.