‘They look fantastic, but it’s a bit sad for us as what you are seeing is what we haven’t picked,’ said Charlie Gallichan, owner of Woodside Farms.
Mr Gallichan – who is the sixth generation of the family to lead the Trinity-based business – said that this year between one and two million daffodil stems from his farm would go to waste, as workers would be unable to pick them in time.
‘The moment they start to open they are unsellable,’ he said. ‘With the above-average temperatures, we got caught with quite a lot of flowers coming into bloom and we didn’t have enough time to pick them. Around February the average temperature is around 8°C or 9°C in the day and around four or five at night. That’s nice and they grow comfortably and controllably. However, once you get into double-digit temperatures in the daytime, and close to double digits at night, they don’t stop growing, so we can’t cope. The sunny days last week made it very difficult.’
Woodside Farm Shop – which began growing daffodils in the 1960s – is Jersey’s biggest producer of daffodils and bulbs, exporting to Europe and the UK as well as selling flowers to stores in the Island. Last week was the peak period for export to France, ahead of La Fête des Grands-Mères (Grandmothers’ Festival), which falls on Sunday. During the celebration it is customary to present grandmothers with a bunch of daffodils.
‘We exported a lot, close to 1.5 million stems, to France for Grandmothers’ Day,’ said Mr Gallichan. ‘The last week of February tends to be our busiest. We have a strong run into Mother’s Day and then we’ll be nearly finished for the year.’
Mr Gallichan added that while the milder weather had negatively impacted daffodil supply this year, demand for the flowers had remained high.
‘There has been no problem selling the flowers, it’s getting them picked that’s the issue,’ he said. ‘Lots of people nationally have had problems with not enough staff, so I think the market has been under-supplied generally this year. If we’d had twice as many daffodils picked, they could have been sold. Demand is going to massively outstrip supply, as opposed to last year, when we had lots of flowers but Covid brought the season to an early end. This year the weather is going to do that.’
Mr Gallichan added that the flowers would normally be picked from the middle of January until the end of March, but he said that the warmer weather was likely to mean that process would end earlier than normal this year.
‘It’s not unusual to be shipping in April, but we won’t be doing that this year,’ he said. ‘We had a target of [picking] about 25 million daffodils this year, so we’re going to be a long way short of that. It’s difficult to say, but I think now if we can get to 20 million I’ll be over the moon.’
