I mistakenly called the flowers I'm speaking of daffodils in the thread title and can't find the way to edit the title. It is my gladiolas I'm speaking of. Most of my gladiolas are at the blooming stage and they're lovely. However, as they've reached their full size they are falling over. I've tied most loosely to stakes, mailboxes or trees to support them. I theorize this. In my obsessive-compulsive manner, which has gotten worse as I've grown older, I continually over water them and all else in my garden. Not having to grow any substantial roots to reach damp soil - they don't, and so when they reach their above ground full growth, it's not matched by a corresponding growth of deeper roots which would anchor the plant. Solution? That's for me to sit back and try and leave them alone instead of allowing my OCD to run things. Does anyone agree with either the cause of the problem or it's solution?
My grandmother had a large flower garden with gladiolas and they always fell over. Maybe they are just meant to be picked. Btw, my larger daffodils fall over too.
My tall lilies also fall over because they are just too top heavy once they have all of those blooms on them. I always just put stakes of some sort to tie them to while they are blooming. Somewhere I remember reading that flowers like gladiolus and lilies are meant to be cut/picked as soon as they are in bloom, simply because they do fall over so easily. My mother loved peonies, and they had those huge flowers also, so she had kind of a cage built around them to hold the stems up when the peonies were in bloom. I fixed the title, and if you look, at the top of the page, it says “thread tools”. If you open that you can fix titles if needed.
So you cut the off whole stem with the flower buds? I need to find some bigger vases. Do you all put a little sugar in your vase water? Would honey be even better? I experimented with the hummingbird water. They don't like honey as much as the good ole refined white sugar. Hummingbirds aren't environmentalists, evidently. ... and why can't I vote more than once in my own pole? I was hoping to rack up a huge number of votes saying how brilliant and handsome I was. But I already know those things, so it doesn't matter.
I do not usually cut mine because I enjoy seeing the blooms out in the front yard, and both Bobby and I look for new blooms on some kind of flower all of the time, so we can tell each other about them, and where to look. My one lily gets 5-6 feet tall, and even though it is a sturdy stem, it wants to fall over when it has lilies; so I always put in a tall stake as soon as it started getting even little tiny buds. This is how it looked this year, and you can see that there are lots of buds and blossoms.
B A U tiful. I need one. I feel the same about cutting them. I'd rather have them in the yard. So I need stakes for both gladiolas and vampires.