Master My Garden Podcast
Master My Garden Podcast
EP199- Exploring the Delightful World of Daffodils with Dave & Jules Hardy Esker Farm Daffodils
In this weeks super episode the topic is Daffodils and other bulbs with Dave & Jules from Esker Farm Daffodils
Gardening enthusiasts, prepare to be dazzled by the delightful world of daffodils as we walk you through the fields of Esker Farm Daffodils in Co Tyrone with guests Dave & Jules Hardy.
Dave & Jules are dedicated growers and are set to divulge the fascinating details of nurturing over 800 unique varieties of daffodils. From a humble hobby to a flourishing business, Dave & Jules journey will inspire you to take on the challenge of growing these bright, beautiful flowers in your own garden.
Listen in as we explore the intricate process of Daffodil classification – from divisions to sizes and colours. What each division means and what it stands for and how these transfer into showing Daffodils at floral shows.
We look into what makes Esker Farm Daffodils special a family enterprise involving all the family and results in bulbs of the finest quality and many rare and unusual varieties not found in mass market retailers.
Finally, we journey into the world of the customer with Esker Farm's diverse daffodil and tulip offerings. From bulb mixes to order quantities, David generously shares insights into the customer process, even revealing the complimentary bulbs they send out with orders. Join us in this petal-powered episode to discover the joy and beauty of gardening!
To order your Esker Farm Daffodils catalogue or for any more information visit their website here: https://www.eskerfarmdaffodils.com
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Until next week
Happy gardening
John
If there is any topic you would like covered in future episodes, please let me know.
Email: info@mastermygarden.com
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Until next week
Happy gardening
John
How's it going everybody? Welcome to Episode 199, master my Garden podcast. Now, this week's episode, we're going back to the topic of bulbs. We sort of delved a little bit into it over the last few weeks, but this week is going to be special. We actually have a specialist flower farm daffodil farm on, and it's David Jones Hardy from Esker Farm, and they are specialist growers of daffodils, predominantly, but not exclusively, and I suppose they're experts in it. This is not your stack them high and sell them cheap type effort. This is specialist growers talking about special varieties, all the different divisions and lots of knowledge, homegrown in Ireland, which is going to be nice as well because, as we know, a lot of the bulbs are transported in different directions around the world. So it's going to be nice to talk to somebody from a homegrown perspective. So, david Jones, you're very, very welcome to Master my Garden podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, thank you.
Speaker 1:So we've just been chatting about the harvest weather we've had over the last couple of weeks and I suppose that's not helping your gig. I know you're very much hands on and a lot of the work that you do and a lot of the growing that you do and the planting and all of that sort of thing, a lot of the work is done by hand. So it's not like, as I said, it's not like you're you're stack them high and sell them cheap type of a setup where you're machine digging and all of this sort of thing. It's very much a hands on. Lots of love and care goes into it. So tell us all about us. It's exciting to have you guys on and, as I said, tell us all about Esker Farm daffodils.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, we, our farm, our business started off really as a hobby that really got out to hand a number of years ago.
Speaker 3:So initially I started growing a few daffodils. I'd gone to a local meeting my local garden society had a flower show in the spring. I decided I wanted to get a few bulbs and started that and started off with 10 bulbs and then it's progressed steadily from there and about seven years ago now, eight years ago we there was a nursery over near Stranford Lock, over near Belfast, south of Belfast, and he was wanting to retire and he approached us to see we would like to take it, take on his business. Now we'd, as I said, we've slowly built up our collection over a few years prior to that and we just started off with our first catalogue, which was an A4 piece of paper folded in half and that was it.
Speaker 2:And Very swish, took us a lot of time together.
Speaker 3:And we went from that jump really 10 years of our business idea, business plan in about 10 months, and we now grow about 800 varieties.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 800 different varieties different daffodil varieties, now, some of those. There might only be one bulb or two bulbs of it, because it's one of our own breeding, so nobody else in the world has it. So there's only one or two of them.
Speaker 2:So we're building up the stock of those. They'll not be available commercially for about another 13, 14 years probably. Well, until we get to the point where we have enough stock to sell. And then what other ones we have? We've got bigger quantities. Now it's in bigger quantities. You're talking 150 bulbs of something, as you say. We're not the bring them in cheap, stack them high that some of our counterparts in other countries are. Yeah, we're more specialist. So, yeah, a lot, a lot of variety within what we have, but not a lot of quantity.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I got to ask you a really kind of silly question, but it springs to mind if you stand in the middle of the feed. You have 800 varieties. Can you name every one of them, and are you going to have to go away and check a few things, or would you know them all now?
Speaker 3:We kind of know most of them Wow.
Speaker 2:Make a good start out of it.
Speaker 3:You've got a rough idea of what's what. When you can see the flower, it's a lot easier. When you're looking at the bulbs, you have no idea. Yeah, you have no clue.
Speaker 2:People say, oh well, how do you know the difference? I think you count. It's like looking at the soul of somebody's shoe and knowing what their face looks like You've no idea at all that you know people. How do you know we can't, which is why we have to be so careful when we are digging and planting to make sure that the varieties aren't mixed up.
Speaker 1:That's an incredible, incredible quantity 800 different varieties.
Speaker 3:Like daffodil wise, registered was about 25,000 different varieties of daffodil.
Speaker 1:Now name varieties.
Speaker 3:Now a lot of them are no longer about the extinct, maybe in someone's garden and lost in time or whatever, but commercial wise. You go to Holland. They grow a much smaller amount, but they'll grow hundreds acres and acres of them and they will lift them with a machine and so on, because we are growing so many different varieties you can't really mechanise that. So we do it all by hand. So all the plantings done by hand, all the digging done by hand. So it's a piece of business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it takes us most of July to dig what we actually dig for stock and for replanting in. We only left about half of our stock. We have it split so that if something catastrophic happens to one year, you should hopefully still have another stock of it. So we left about 85,000 bulbs by hand, whereas one of our Dutch counterparts is able to process about a quarter of a million in an hour because they're going through with a tractor and what's basically a potato lifter and they're just lifting but the whole field is all the same variety, whereas our two acre field we've got 800 varieties. So you're lifting really a third of that because we leave it a third of the field fallow. So we dig what's basically a third of the field. It keeps us up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, about three quarters of an acre every year.
Speaker 1:It keeps you fit is right, and when you say by hand, you're literally digging them by fork, or yeah well previously we would have done.
Speaker 3:We've used. We grow them in ridges, so like a raised bed, and they're all planted in rows and you get about 10 to 12 bulbs across the ridge, so in line. So previously we would have used spade or a fork just to dig each of the rows out. The last couple of years we bought some broad forks, which are fantastic, and that means now we can near enough do the full ridge across at a time and we've got a nice broad fork and the two handles and you put it back and the net exposes all the bulbs. You just work your way up those ridges like that and then it's just we usually I'm on the broad fork pulling the back and she picks all the bulbs out of the children.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, one broad fork each and work down the ridges, and then we have one child each, and one child carry Brilliant. Yeah, we can have to earn their keep.
Speaker 1:Teamwork and there's no danger of them mixing up bulbs or anything. They're all well tuned in at this stage.
Speaker 3:They know what they're doing and they fully aware of, because we're just digging a row at a time.
Speaker 2:Yes, we have a marker at the beginning and then a marker at the end so we know when that variety is done. So whichever child is tasked with the carrying, that day they take and then you move on. So you have an empty crate then for the next one. So there's.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you guys, you're selling all over the world. Obviously you sell within Ireland, uk, europe, and I know you mentioned it when we were chatting on the run up the disk that you sell quite a lot to the US. So that tells me that, like what you have is specialist varieties, people are collecting them. So maybe talk to us a little bit about that. I know you're one of the only websites where you talk about daffodil divisions, or one of the only sellers that I'm aware of that talk about divisions. So tell people about the vision, because I don't think generally, people will even understand that. So tell us about the divisions, what they mean, and so on.
Speaker 3:Well, often we do talks and go around and occurs and different events and you end up with people first of all going oh, I want thinking a division. One is the best Right Thinking like all the division one, top division, they're the star ones. Division two is not quite as good, and it's nothing to do with that.
Speaker 3:So, first of all it's explaining. So when you have a catalog or you want a website or they needed to be able to and it's an international, recognised way of arranging the daffodils. So if you go to any country and any shows, they'll all be arranged the same way. So a division one, and it's all to do with the cup, the trumpet of the daffodil, the proportion of it. So if you were to bend the petals, if you imagine the petals like ears, and if you bend your ears, the ears in, if the cup sticks past the length of the petals when the button bends in, that's a division one. So that's a trumpet daffodil, okay. Division two is where it's equal down to half. So the cup is shorter and it's between the equal to the length of a petal and half of a petal. Division three is then from half down to near enough and nothing. Division four is a double daffodil which is like a pom pom, yeah, almost like a peony rose type idea.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Division five, a triandrous, so they're like the Thalia common one. Everybody will know. Like Thalia is a division five, it droops its head down. Division six are the cyclominious daffodils and the petals on those are reflex back. So I always describe it when we're doing talks. It's like, you know, when you see a dog out of a side of a car, it head out of the window and the ears are f**king back. So it's just like that. So that's again with the ears and everything. That's the division six.
Speaker 3:Sevens and eights are the cyclominious daffodil. So sevens are junk willow and eights are tizettas. So tizetta, you often see that there's lots and lots of flowers to a stem and they're very. Both of them are very scented. Nine are your pheasantae, your poet daffodils. Yeah, they're often a lot later April into May. Division 10 is your bulbocodiums, so the hoopeticote daffodils. Eleven are they're like the marmite of daffodils. Some people love them, some people detest them. They're the splits. So it's where the cup is completely split open and it's back reflexed against the petals and that's almost like that's the bad boxer of daffodils, because the cup, the nose, has been punched and it's splattered across the actual petals itself. Twelves are your odd ones, where they don't really fit anywhere. So tetetet is a division 12. Okay, it doesn't fit in any of the other divisions. And then 13 is the last one, that's the species ones, that's the wild ones. So that's the 13 different divisions.
Speaker 3:Very quickly split up. And then if you're looking at a label, if you're looking at a variety, usually it's got some letters behind it. So there's a. I'm just trying to think of one now. The Greek surprise, which is a double, is a division four. So it's a double division four. And then the number, the letters behind it are w and y, so it means it's white and yellow. So if it's a daffodil and it's a standard, looking, traditional, looking daffodil with the yellow petals, it would be division one yellow. So division one y. And then it's got an orange cup, it would be a one y o. So and that's just how everybody splits them all up.
Speaker 2:So it's really really straightforward once you know what each of the divisions mean yeah, and the divisions aren't just for the standards, that's across, whether they're intermediate size or miniature size. It's to do with the proportions of the cup, because a lot of people assume that the divisions are only for the standard size, but they're not. They cross into the intermediate and the miniature and the microminatures as well.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:You can have the same characteristics in a flower that is the size of a 10 cents coin or a big standard daffodil. This has the same classification.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that's why the tete-a-tete was in. What did you say? 10 or 9? 9 or 10? 12.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's one of the. If you can't find a box, stick it in here.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that's the classification which I was vaguely aware of, but not to that depth. And so there's a lot of people, and I guess a lot of your customers are buying for showing it will be a certain amount of it. And then obviously there's people who are collectors then as well, like yourself, started off with seven and ended up with 800. So the showing of them. So again, it's something that I find showing in general intriguing.
Speaker 1:Like I was at a show recently, and it was when was it? It would have been back in June, I'd say, or July, but anyway, there was no daffodils there, obviously time of year, but there was different types of flowers. There was roses there and there was obviously, like even the country fair type judging the brown bread. You have 10 superb brown breads, but how do you choose one over the other? So when it comes to daffodils and even the roses that I was looking at that day, it's very, very hard to how do you pick a winner when you have 10 supreme flowers in front of you? So how does that go? And how would you pick something within a judging competition like that? Well, it is difficult.
Speaker 2:And a lot of it is down to the individual person as well as to what they're like. There are marks for different things. You'll have for form, you'll have for size. If it's true to size, you'll lose nicks. You lose marks sorry, if there's like a slight nick out of it, you have to make sure that they're centered or they're clocked right. So the top pedal should be pointing up to 12, bottom pedal should be pointing down to six. It should be evenly distributed.
Speaker 2:There's a whole lot of things that go into it and it can be slightly different if it's a single bloom class or if it's a multi-bloom class. You can have up to 12 flowers, so you're getting marks for each of the different ones. That then goes together as your total. So you might have one flower that just lets you down a little bit because it starts to wilt, or look down instead of looking up, or there's a few tricks to the trade that you can kind of work to manipulate them, but it's it is down to the individual, whoever the judges are going to have it, and that with the short there's, we often a lot of our customers would be buying them for the daffodils shops.
Speaker 3:So they're often staged individually and they're in the green little bikini valses they're called, and they'll be packed in with some moss to hold them in place, where sometimes they can droop the head a little bit. So you've got to manipulate them a little bit. But then again it depends on some of the miniature, some of the smaller ones and species ones they're really suited to, like alpine growers. So you've got a lot of them and they will be growing them in pots and bringing them as a whole pot or something. So it depends on what people are growing them for and we have a lot of customers that don't show at all and just want something nice in the garden, just something a little bit unusual, and just have them in pots or in, and often the names Because they've got so many different names as well, it might be a name that catches the eye or they can relate to.
Speaker 2:Yeah they've got somebody in their family that is of that name. I was doing a sale last week and a girl was just walking past and she went oh, there's a daffodil with my name. So I went oh, hello, lauren, how do you know what my name is? I know I'm selling a daffodil called Lauren, and that's the only one that I have. That's a girl's name. So unless your name is V Vash, it has to be Lauren, oh my goodness. So she bought a bag of Lauren because her name was Lauren. She wasn't planning on buying daffodil bulbs, but when she saw that it was her name, she's like I have to have it. So we get people like that for a special anniversary or birthday or something like that. There's a variety called birthday girl, there's a variety called Ruby wedding. So we've had people looking to buy as a present for somebody.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:A voucher towards buying it because maybe it's the wrong time of year. So they look ahead and think, oh well, when, when it's the right time of year to lift, can I get 10 bulbs of that for my friend or my husband or brother, whatever it happens today, yeah, and it's just because there's so many different varieties and so many different shapes and colors.
Speaker 3:Like so, I started growing daffodils myself. My view of a daffodil was it was a yellow trumpet and you know that was when I grew up. That was all I ever saw. It was a daffodil, was yellow, it had a trumpet cup and it was out in March, april time. It was only after going, starting on, to a couple of the local shows and that's what got me hooked and you could see I didn't know they came white or pink or green or or flowering.
Speaker 2:We have one. We have daffodils in our greenhouse flowering at the minute. Well, there are autumn flowering ones which people go. That's not a daffodil. No, it definitely is.
Speaker 1:And what variety is that now? So that's not going to flower outside.
Speaker 3:Red from a species variety called varida floris. They come from Morocco into southern Spain, so they will flower, naturally. There's lots of autumn flowering ones that will flower now, and they're really geared towards once that area gets its first heavy rainfall. Then they suddenly come into flower. So that's that, now they've been bred. This one that we've got is a hybrid. It's called verdant sparks.
Speaker 2:So again, size wise it's, it's tiny, tiny little thing, vivid green color, and it's very starry, so the petals are very, very pointed and reflex back on like they wouldn't look, like somebody wouldn't look at it and go oh, that's definitely a daffodil, because it doesn't look rounded. And the obvious yellow cup.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not your typical.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, it's it's not, it's a bit more this one that one's a little bit more difficult to grow. The autumn ones you tend to have to grow Well here we would have to grow them in a glasshouse. You need a bit of heat. In the summer we're not really. You couldn't really grow them out in the garden. But majority of the appadals are grand. They normal run of the mill ones. We grow them all in the field or raised beds outside and tough as old boots. Yeah, some of the this as the autumn flowering one. They're a little bit more, need a little bit more work to them.
Speaker 1:And you on your website you have other other bulbs as well. Are you growing those as well, or is it just the daffodil grown so you're growing all the other ones? So fritillaries, comassias, tulips.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we, we, we specialize in lots of, as we specialize in bulbs. So we've got lots of other things that we're trying to again. It's just things that we've collected over time and we just been slowly building up, and now that we've got more and more of them, we've got a small surplus that we've got with it. Right well, we've got enough of them. We can put a few on the website. So, selection of fritillaria Coradales propus. We've got a big collection now of galanthus that we've been building up over the last few years.
Speaker 2:Maybe only two or three of a bulb that we would have. It's not 200. So somebody we get phone calls all the time Hi, I'm looking for a five kilo bag of something. We don't have a five kilo bag because we don't. We don't plant that many, so we're not digging that many to start with.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, if you're looking for something, we can give you chip bags, smaller quantities of things, but not not. We're not. We don't supply nurseries, we don't supply big conglomerates, because we don't have that big stocks that people need to bring those straight in out of Holland. But the other things they the most special, the most special, the most specialist things.
Speaker 2:The only thing that we don't grow are tulips. We can't compete with the Dutch on that, so we actually bring the tulips in. It's a friend who has a similar size nursery in Holland, so he buys daffodils from us and we buy tulips from him.
Speaker 1:OK, yeah, so we bring those in just to run the mill.
Speaker 1:So that kind of leads me on to tulips, and Spogwit is a couple of weeks ago. So tulips, obviously they're. They've been used in all of the, I suppose, open gardens around the country and they're used for that early pop of color. There's huge amounts of them being planted but they're so short term and I was talking about this on the podcast a couple of weeks ago but it's funny and I'm sure the show garden people know this but generally the the Joe public doesn't know, the ordinary gardener at home doesn't know that like daffodils you can get to flower from sometimes December right through to, I suppose, end of March, middle of middle of April, that be May we have.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we have ones, and especially the division nine, that are later. They're only flowering the end of May, even the start of, depending on the weather that you're having in the season, but we can have one still flowering right through to the end of May.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think. I think that's Something that should be sort of talked about a little bit more, because tulips and the way that tulips are being used and and sold and distributed and planted and then they're not coming back, there is no, there is no longevity in it. So from an eco perspective it makes very little sense. But you can get so much flower OK, they're a different flower, but you can get so much flower and longevity from daffodils but I don't think there's an awareness. I think it's a bit like what you said at the start, dave.
Speaker 1:Your original thinking was you have these yellow trumpets and that's kind of it, and I think people do view them as being sort of a small window around daffodil day that you get this flower. But to be able to have flower with the right selection from sort of December through to May, as you said, that's a long period of time. I know you might get little windows where you're missing a week or a few days, but like that's a long period of flower that I don't know that people are aware of. Would that be fair to say?
Speaker 3:it is, it's when, again, when you're buying daffodils, it's looking at the season. So often within our catalog we would have if they are early season, mid season or late season, so you can plan to range of daffodils but that will come out over a long period of time. So it's, as I said, picking different varieties that will flower at different times of spring and, as you said, you can get ones, some very, very early ones that will come out in December, beginning of January, all the way through to May. So there is a big period of time. But if you're picking a variety, if you pick one variety that will have its slot that it will flower in. But if you're planting them within a garden, it's a good idea to maybe looking, maybe picking early one, pick a mid one, pick a late one, but you're stretching out that flowering period.
Speaker 3:Daffodils are suited to our climate. Ireland is renowned throughout the world. There's probably the everybody assumes flowers, assume the Netherlands. But daffodils, the daffodil, the breeding of daffodils, the hotbed of it for the last couple of hundred years has been Ireland and it's been the place that breeding and creating new daffodils has been going on throughout the world, going back to the late 1800s, early 1900s.
Speaker 2:So you know it's. It's mad to think that since then people in Ireland have been purposely breeding to improve, to make better, to do. Most people assume daffodils in Holland but the actual, more elite varieties and things like that there's. There's a big, big history in Ireland, throughout Ireland, from north to south actually.
Speaker 3:And what you're saying about tulips, the more difficult to grow. They're not overly suited and the way that the Dutch have been breeding them, they've been breeding for big, lousy flowers that are going to give you a fantastic display. They've not been breeding for longevity, they want something that's going to. And where a lot of people make mistakes with the tulip is they don't plant them deep enough and usually the daffodil you'd be planting it 10 centimetres down.
Speaker 3:You're almost. You almost always walk along the lines of like, imagining that there's two bulbs above the bulb. Yeah, when you put it in the ground where a tulip, you want it a good bit deeper. You almost wanted to be going down almost a foot when you plant in a tulip, but you want people to plant them in the garden or plant them on roundabouts or whatever. They're not. They're planting them for roundabouts and councils and so on. They will plant them and it's a bedding, but in the main and couple of months like they're not wanting to get planted deep because they've got to come on and dig them all back out again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:If you've got ones, you can get them good and deep. They've got a better chance of them coming back or going more towards the species ones, yeah, closer and the wilder the smaller, more species. Right, the ones that are more closely linked to the species, I've got a better chance of coming back. You're on your tulips, got to get them deep.
Speaker 2:But it's self fulfilling for the Dutch, because if you buy a tulip that you like and it flowers for the year and doesn't come back, will you're going to go and buy another bag of them?
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:So you know it's self serving. They flower one year that you're going to replace them, whereas if you buy it and they keep flowering, you're not going to keep buying the bulbs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I do. I find tulips and the way that we're planting them these days a little bit frustrating, to be honest with you, and the amount of energy and effort that goes into it. And then they are a one year wonder. Okay, they do look good, but I'm not sure that people understand that the daffodils can give you so much as well. And I think that maybe is a key point that you do need to look out for the early, mid and late season and, with that in mind, just some of the varieties that you might have that would fall into each of those sort of flowering periods, obviously of 800 varieties so it might be catching a little bit on the spot here but just some of the earlier ones, some mid and some late, just so people could sort of jot down some names that might work in their scheme.
Speaker 3:Right then Early ones. We have one called Springdeckwin Oaks. Yeah, obviously the name is early, early in the season. Firefighter is an early variety as well. I'm trying to think what we would have at shows at a different time. Mid season there's lots and lots. Mid season pick Great surprises. I think I've already mentioned it's fairly that's middle to late. Golden Peak is a nice traditional looking yellow one. All these are Irish varieties, all been bred. Soprano, which is a lovely small flowered one, a little white pink one that's fairly light. Yeah, there's so many.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's on the varieties. You're going to have lots to take it back to yourself and your catalog. So you mentioned earlier on like you have a catalog that comes out every year. It's out quite early in the year, so tell us about that and what people have found in it and in the time scales. Obviously you've already said you're lifting maybe 100 to 150 bulbs of certain varieties, or maybe less in some cases, so you're out early. I think you said about Patrick's Day with your catalog. So explain the whole timelines, procedures and how your catalog works.
Speaker 2:We usually spend the winter updating the catalog and updating the website. We decide which varieties we want to introduce. We usually introduce about 10 to 12 new varieties every year. So people say, oh, I got a catalog in 2020. I'll not take one from you. You had 21 introductions, 22 introductions, 23 introductions. You're sort of missing out on at least three dozen new varieties there. We separate them into after the new introductions. Then there's a section for miniatures, a section for intermediates. So if you are looking for the slightly smaller, you only have a small section to look at and then the rest of the catalog is split into the divisions. So, again, easy to look at.
Speaker 2:We try and have it out around a bit Some Patrick's Day, it's just. It's an easy marker for us to work with and that's usually, as Dave said, the start of the show season, so people can take the catalog along. This is the shoes, so they can take it along with them. You see a flower on the show bench that they like, flick through. Oh, they have it. I'll just put a week kiss beside it so that I remember that I like that one. They can take the book home. You know, a lot of people said to us oh, do you know it costs a lot of money to produce a catalog? Yes, it does, but we like to be able to flick through. We put a lot of photographs in, so every other page nearly as photographs, so you can actually compare variety with variety. You can fold down the corner dog ear it, pick it up with your coffee now, come back to it a couple of days later, go to a show next week, take it with you.
Speaker 2:I like that one, but what does it actually look like on the show bench? Oh, that one there is actually even better. I'll put a week mark beside it. I'll come home and I'll pick and choose which ones are like. Oh, that one's actually on offer. It's three for 10 pounds, so I can actually get three bulbs. That would improve my chance of getting a better flower because I've got three bulbs to choose from. So we're getting orders coming in very early on, especially for the new introduction. People are always watching out what new one are they putting out? So maybe ones that we've had as a seedling number, especially in the American market. They're looking all the time. What are they actually introducing this year? And then we would be taking orders all the way through, till September time, obviously yeah, we ended up this year.
Speaker 3:we have Instagram account, facebook account as well. We've been drip feeding just with a photo of the new introduction and that the website, the catalogue, was going live. So we ended up doing an Instagram live, as you do, introducing and showing the people the website While we were still on the live within the first five minutes. Somebody had been waiting for the website to go live and, as we were on, the first order came in. It was like, oh, trying to cover up on the screen, oh, there's the first order coming in.
Speaker 2:But we do have people waiting, desperate with waiting just because they know they want maybe one of the new introductions and we might only have 10 or 12 bulbs available for that season, so they want to make sure that they're getting one of those 12 bulbs, because they'll not get it until maybe next year otherwise.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just thinking here. Your customer, so your seven? How many years in business did you say Seven? This is our seventh year, so seven years in business, and you would have seen people coming through the doors at the start and they're collectors. What has the customer journey been like? Have you people who are with you every year, are waiting for something off you every year, or have you somebody that wasn't a collector and has come, like you guys, started off with maybe two or three varieties and now they're actually after getting hooked and they're starting to build a collection?
Speaker 3:Very, both, really Every scenario. Customers that have been with us from year one and will every year put in an order maybe just get a few different ones. And we have some people that it's funny how different countries do different things. So US, uk, europe, they tend to get more of the multi packs or there'll be threes, fives of a variety, whereas the Japanese tend to get one bulb of lots and lots of varieties, so that you'll end up with their order it'll be paging a bit and it'll be one, one, one, one, one one, whereas other countries maybe smaller varieties, smaller selection of varieties, but bigger numbers. It's funny how you get those.
Speaker 2:Sometimes you might have had somebody who ordered one because, say, for example, the girl who bought Lauren, they've bought one and then usually when we send out an order we will always send a gratis bulb as well. So we've had people come back and say, oh, you've sent us bulbs that we didn't order, not realizing it was a gratis. They've got the gratis and then when it's floured they've really liked it. So they've actually come back then and ordered whatever spring sons that.
Speaker 2:I can think of one lady who came back and then every year since then she bought that might have even been Lauren, actually for her niece or something. It was a special birthday. So she bought a quantity of them and I sent the gratis bulb of spring sunset. It's a lovely yellow pink. It came up she was like that's absolutely gorgeous. She came back, she ordered, and she has ordered a small quantity of different varieties, the more financially accessible ones, so the three for 10 pounds or something like that. So she's put an order in. So it's gradually increasing because I always keep a record of customers and you can see the Japanese when, as Dave said, they'll come in and there'll be like 40, but it's all the newest ones and it's 1111111, and then they won't order for a year or two and then, they'll order again and it'll be 11111, but it'll be all this year's introductions plus last year's introductions.
Speaker 2:So they'll kind of save up their postage and buy a few.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. And then we have bulb mixes. So what we do is we take bulbs out of the pigeonhole surplus bulbs, so they're the variety that we sell in the catalogue and we put a mixed bag together and then we have those as I said talks and furs and so on, and people get a catalogue at the same time. So that's part of the fun, where you end up getting a photograph being sent to you in early spring. Someone said I got a bag of mixed bulbs. This is one of them that's flowered. I think it's this. So they've gone through the catalogue trying to work out what it is. I think it's peach snaps, am I right? And so then we can email them back to you. Yeah, I think you've got it spot on there. Or maybe it's not that one, maybe it's a bowery or a different variety. So it's great that people are then able to flick through and again, that's the advantage with the catalogue as well where they can prune through.
Speaker 2:So they can get a larger quantity of. They are all the shiw quality because, as some people say, oh well, I don't want just the cheeky ones. It's like, no, these are shiw. So you could have a 10 pound bulb, a 15 pound bulb, a six pound bulb in your bag. You're getting 10 flowering size bulbs for four pounds. But it's a way for us to make some money back on stock that we have that's surplus to what we need for our orders and it's a way of getting our flowers out there there's.
Speaker 2:Somebody goes oh, that's beautiful, I wonder what it is. They flick through the catalogue and maybe they go oh, it might be that one, it might be that one, do you know what? I'll order one of each of those and then when they come, I'll know which one it is, and then the following year I can order more of it, because I really like that one. Or they take it to a show and they win, and then they're hooked.
Speaker 1:So you probably have a couple of different types of collectors there. So, yeah, a couple of other things spring to mind. You mentioned galantis and snow drops, that you're growing those, so obviously they're going to be available, I suppose in the springtime in the green. That's how you do that. How many varieties? What have you got? Is there anything people should?
Speaker 3:watch out for, again, it's a hobby that's slowly got out of hand. It's a hobby that's very dangerous. We started off the week when I initially started with the snow drops. I was only picking a few because I wanted to be able to clearly see obvious differences with them. And then you obviously get hooked and you're looking then at the minute differences We've got about 170-ish different varieties I haven't counted the list.
Speaker 3:About 170. This summer we ended up taking on a lot of different varieties from a grower over in England. He was retiring. We got a lot from her Now. There was a lot of fun getting them over here with.
Speaker 1:Brexit and so on.
Speaker 3:So we obviously had to make sure everything was done properly With the snow drops. We had to apply for a thing called the CITES certificate, which involved the Department of Agriculture, border Force Q Gardens.
Speaker 2:Five different agencies involved in us bringing snow drops from England home. It was crazy. But if you don't do it right, there's a three-year prison sentence attached to it, Because they're protected species, the same as ivory. They're protected.
Speaker 1:And nearly worse than that. There's a very high value of consignment that could go wrong. You don't want anything happening there.
Speaker 3:We got it all sorted, got them all back. That increased our selection that we had by a good bit. We got some very unusual, very rare ones that maybe there's a lot that haven't been introduced yet. Maybe there's been one or two built so previously. But it watched the space.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so again, we spoke about it on the podcast before. But in the green in the springtime is by far the best way to grow snow drops and to establish snow drops in your garden.
Speaker 3:Yes and no, yes and no. Good, we're selling them in the green, either buying them in a pot, or you can. Often, if you're buying from nurseries in the green, they will be knocked out of the pot, maybe wrapped in a little bit of moss and posted off. They're not drying out. You're getting them, the bulbs, there. It's bulbs out and fresh, the roots are still lovely and you can pop them up, get them in the ground.
Speaker 3:Great Were people struggle with snow drops if they're buying them as a bulb, those often when you're buying them in a hardware store or something like that, the small, little nabalus variety, which are naturally little, small bulbs and they could have been out of the ground for three or four months so they desiccate very quickly. So snow drops ideally if you're buying them from a nursery and they're selling them just as a bulb. Generally they're grand. If they've grown them, they haven't been out of the ground for too long and they're basically lifted, cleaned and shipped. Generally they'll be fine. They'll be fine. But the issue is when you buy them in the packet and they're coming along distances and they dry out very quick yes, ideally in the green and also at the advantage within the green, you'll actually see them flower.
Speaker 3:So if you go to some great snow drop events around the country and if you go there, they're all in pots and you can see them flower and you can see what you're getting.
Speaker 2:That's great, which you can't see as a bulb, obviously.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can see it as a bulb Getting towards the end now, but in terms of so you guys have 800 odd varieties of daffodils around the country in Ireland and I have lots of listeners in the US so I'm sure there's big collections over there, but in Ireland where would people see trying to big collections of daffodils?
Speaker 3:Well, one great collection is Cahogridge Gardens in County Clare. A friend of ours who owns the garden, carl Wright, has over the last probably about 10 years been collecting and building up. He comes and helps plant the bulbs in the autumn so he'll come up for a few days and gets paid in bulbs. So he comes up and he's been here the last couple of days. He's only just away this morning so he's going to wait with lots and lots of new varieties to plant into the garden there Amazing garden and he's got a fantastic collection there.
Speaker 3:Blarney Castle is starting to build up a collection. We were down with them two weeks ago and with a lot of varieties so they got some last year in the building them up. So they've got a great collection there slowly building up there Around the country. Other places Hullsburg Castle is starting to build up a collection there. It's still in its infancy but they've got a few in the Botanic Garden in Belfast and in Dublin. Both got a selection of daffodils. We ended up.
Speaker 3:I'd been down to a talk down at the Botanic in Glass Nevin a few years ago. Chamberso Brine was doing a talk about one of his trips and we were down there and it was speaking to one of the staff there and I ended up mentioning that there's a variety called Glass Nevin. They didn't realise, so we came back, I got them a bag of Glass Nevin bowls, sent them down and they're in one of the beds over near the Herbarium Nevin so they planted this. So in the spring there is Narcissus Glass Nevin. That was a gift from us a few years ago. Yeah, belfield, hullsburg Castle is starting to build up a collection there as well.
Speaker 1:There's a big collection of snowdrops there as well, I believe. I haven't got over to see them yet, but I believe there is a big collection there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we were down with. They had one of the open days down here in February. It was fabulous really really good day, Brilliant.
Speaker 1:We're starting to round off. I have a question related to General Bulbs. What's your opinion on the trends that you see at the moment of lasagna planting? What's your opinion on it? Just as a matter of interest.
Speaker 2:Lasagna planting. That's just something that we have done for years whenever we've had surplus bulbs. It means that you can plant in the one container and you will have continual colour If you plant your tulips deep to the bottom, your daffodils in the middle and then on the top anything that's about the size of a crocus. So snowdrops, miniature tulips, miniature daffodils, crocuses, and then what I've done is just top it with winter pansay or prim roses so that when the bulbs aren't flowering, that you've still got some interest on the top of it. We had ones outside our front door for over a year because literally as one came up, then the rest they were all following. The prim roses were there to add a bit of interest when there wasn't flowers.
Speaker 3:Now with a pot, what's the heat on it? If you're doing a lasagna pot, you're probably talking about one season, one year, and that's it, because the nutrients within the soil, within the compost, is going to run out. So you can have a lovely display and then, come the summer, knock them all out, either plant them then within the garden. But they are grand, they give you an interest. You can have something as one's going over the next one's coming through. So the great good things.
Speaker 1:The reason I asked that question was I was speaking about it a couple of weeks ago. I'm not a fan of the lasagna planting. I do understand that it gives you the flower-over period, but I always find that the leaves of the one that's going over and the flower of the one that's going over takes from the next one that's coming through, and that was kind of what I was thinking. That.
Speaker 3:It's picking the varieties, though, and by having, if you're planting like the crocus, if you have your first one's crocus and they've flowered, if you pull off the little dead flowers on them you don't really see. The foliage from the crocus is fairly inconspicuous, depending again on the varieties of the daffodil then you may put in. You can get something that you don't want, something that's maybe a clot in height and it's going to collapse. If you get something that's maybe an intermediate, which is shorter, smaller flowers, slightly finer foliage, again it's not going to take away too much and then afterwards you could have your tulip or you could have your brittle areas coming through, something like that.
Speaker 3:It's not just putting anything in. I can understand If you have stuff and you've got a big tall daffodil in it and then you're waiting for the tulips come through and the flowers are looking awful and so on. But if you pick the right ones, if it's going in a pot, you're probably not wanting really big, tall ones anyway. You're wanting something a little bit. You could have your last one, the tulips being a big tall tulip that's going to hide everything. But it's picking the right varieties.
Speaker 2:I think they're maybe certainly accessible for somebody who maybe doesn't have a garden or for somebody who's elderly that can't if you can set a pot outside their back door.
Speaker 2:I know a friend of mine actually bought bulbs and did the lasagna layering for her mother and her mother-in-law. Her mother-in-law wasn't able to get out into the garden, as she had been, and she sat for weeks literally watching the flowers come up and was taking pictures going look at this lovely one. Look at this lovely one, because we're all different as far as she was concerned, completely different things, and she got so much joy out of that and my friend's like I can't believe, like for three bags for 10 pounds. She just got so much enjoyment out of that because she wasn't able to be able to access her garden.
Speaker 1:So for somebody like that, it makes the garden, it definitely has its place. And if you're tight on space, for sure and I guess yeah, if you're choosing plants, maybe in a better way, you'll avoid the problems that I kind of envisaged with it. So yeah, final question I know there was a kind of a trend over the last few years towards pink, pink coloured daffodils. What's the current trend? Is it still pink or is there kind of a new trend coming through?
Speaker 2:We don't really see trends because obviously it's not the mass market that we're catering towards. People just want the best for their whichever show they are.
Speaker 3:But it's slightly smaller Because gardens are generally getting smaller and people are. The intermediate to the miniature is becoming more popular Because, with people not having the space, you can grow those either in pots or troughs or maybe just a small flower bed. So the smaller ones are becoming more popular and you get in a bit more choice and a bit more availability. The intermediates I really like intermediates which are the halfway between and they're not too tall and the work welling pots are the work welling in the borders as well, so that's very popular.
Speaker 2:With the regular sort of public. That would be what Whenever we've been doing sales and talks people are looking for things that aren't too tall. So, yeah, the intermediate size wise ones are, and the miniatures definitely would be.
Speaker 1:Very final question your top tips for after your daffodils have finished flowering. So there's lots of people tied them up.
Speaker 2:Don't do that.
Speaker 1:This is what I like to hear. Some people tied them up, some cut them off, obviously too early. So what should you do?
Speaker 3:You want to leave them as long as possible. A lot of people want nice, tidy form. So in the past it was always bend them over a little last band or braid them. Seen that before as well. They've obviously got far too much time. If they've got the time to braid all the foliage up, the best thing you can do is pull the heads off. So once the flowers gone over, just run your hand over the top and pull the head off the flower. Leave the stem, the flower stem as well. If you can Just take the head off, that means all the energy from the foliage is going down into the bulb or necksha, whereas if you leave the bud at the top of the stem, the energy is going up to produce seed.
Speaker 3:So take the head off and then the main thing is just leave it as long as possible. There are certain places where people struggle, so it's again where you're planting them. So down our driveway we've got them planted through the grass, but we've got them next to the fence so we can leave a strip about a foot strip against the fence where we can leave it to grow a bit longer and let the grass grow up through and the daffodils to die down. Naturally, in the flower beds it's packing other things around them, so the herbaceous perennials start coming up. They don't really spot the daffodil foliage dying away and you want to leave it as long so it's almost going brown and dying fully. And that means because the leaves are like the solar panels of the plant and they're feeding the bulb for necksha's flower, and where people run them over with the lawnmower, they're starving it and that's why often they don't come back. Eventually you get leaves but no flowers. So the main thing leave them as long as possible, okay great tip.
Speaker 2:I'll give you some that you don't like the mess, if you don't want them.
Speaker 1:So, before we finish off now, your catalogue typically comes out around St Patrick's Day, so direct people to where they can access that your website. You've mentioned your social channels, so maybe tell people where they can find you and how they can get in contact or, if they have specific things that they're chasing and looking for, how they can get in contact with you guys.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, the website is there all the time. It'll just say not available until spring, whatever, but you can still search for all the varieties that we have. So it is wwweskerfarmdaffodilscom. It's all on word, and it's Esker, not Esgraf, that's a different town, land.
Speaker 1:And you'll find so obviously on Instagram and Facebook as well it's Eskerfarmdaffodils. And yeah, perfect.
Speaker 2:Send a message.
Speaker 3:Send us a message.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we'll not get straight back, but we'll get there If it's there, we know it's there and we'll.
Speaker 3:And then if people are wanting a catalogue, we send them out in the spring and they can either drop us an email or there's contact details on the website where people can just register or send us a message and we add the address down to the mailing list and we post them out February, March time, March usually.
Speaker 1:Brilliant, so it's been really interesting chat. As I said at the start, this is not your run of the mills that can buy. Sell them cheap type bulbs. This is, you know, specialist. This is a classier type bulbs and obviously a lot of love and attention goes into it, with the whole family involved in it as well. So, David and Jules, thank you very, very much for coming on Mass From. Regarding Podcast.
Speaker 3:Thank you very much, thank you.
Speaker 1:So that's been this week's episode. A huge thanks to David and Jules. Really interesting chat, Lots of great tips in there. And, yeah, if you are after, you know things that are a bit more special. If you're looking for something that might have your name in it, have a look on the website. You might find something there that has your name on it.
Speaker 1:And yeah, as I say, specialist growers based in Ireland. So it's great to see, great to see businesses like that. Great to hear the I suppose, the a bit more detail on the divisions. I was aware of divisions, but not really what they meant to be fair, so great to hear more on that as well. And yeah, there's lots there. So check them out on their website, on the social channels and, yeah, ideal place to start building your, your daffodil collection. It probably will, as it has for David and Jules, become a bit of an addiction and maybe at some point you'll end up with hundreds as well, but definitely a great place to start. So that's been this week's episode. Thanks for listening and until the next time, happy gardening.