Daffodills

 The only downside to having a beautiful spring garden full of daffodils is the shaggy phase while you are waiting for the foliage to die back.  With all spring bulbs, the longer you leave the foliage the better chance you have of having abundant blooms the following spring.  You can do clever things like braiding or knotting the foliage to make it look tidy but that takes time too.  If you leave them until they are completely dead then it is so much easier to pull them out.  When they are in their bead-head stage they don't pull and they don't cut well either.  Later blooming varieties stay green longer into the summer.

I leave them as long as I can stand them.  These are not the last of them.  I started cutting a week or so ago and I am half done.  Cleaning them out transforms a bed from a rambling mess to neat and tidy.  It can also make things look a bit bare.  This would be the time to add annuals to the empty spaces, and many years I do.  But this year they are just going to have to stay with the clean and tidy look.

As I was crawling around my tomato beds yesterday transplanting Nasturtiums, I finally found the first large tomato to set.  This is on one of the dwarf plants.  I am really loving the idea of the dwarf varieties because I can start them indoors so much earlier than indeterminate varieties knowing they will not be as tall and hard to handle when the weather allows me to set them out.  And that means earlier tomatoes!