Mother's Day on 2 March is the peak for a hectic trading period for daffodil supplier Jim Hosking of Fentongollan Farm, Cornwall, which has the largest number of varieties in commercial production

Mother's Day sees demand peak. The rest of the farm nearly has to stop to deal with all the orders. It's like Christmas for the turkey trade.

The daffodil and narcissi season starts in early January in West Cornwall and in the middle of January where we are (in Truro in mid-Cornwall), and lasts into April.

Each year gets a tiny bit earlier. We now start about a month earlier than we did 10 years ago because of the increase in the temperature. The early Easter this year will suit us better because if it's a late Easter we will start to run out. We also need a cool spring so they don't all come at once and saturate the market.

The price is holding up at the moment. Ten bulbs usually market for about £2.50, and special new varieties may be £3.50.

We grow more than 100 varieties. There are about 150 varieties in the pipeline from an extensive breeding programme in the 1960s and 1970s at a Ministry-run experimental farm at Camborne, but unless you use artificial means to propagate them it takes about 20 years to go from one bulb to commercial production.

Daffodils from Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly are the first outdoor flowers to appear in Europe, due to the moderate climate and humidity. We have 160 acres of daffodils and narcissi, and we have two harvests - the flowers in the spring and half of the bulbs in the summer, with the remainder harvested the following year.

One third of our flowers go direct into the provincial markets, one third direct to the supermarkets nationally and one third direct into Europe via the Netherlands. A growing part of the business is orders from our website.

Fentongollan Farm has been in the family for 125 years. We originally had a mixed farm of cattle, sheep, pigs and corn, as well as flower production, and we have diversified into vegetables and other crops such as cereals.

We provide 60-70% of all the vegetable plants grown in Cornwall (80-90 million plants), which start in a nursery like ours, because seed is too expensive to sow straight into the ground.

We were awarded Progressive Farmer of the Year in 2005 for our supply of daffodils, bulbs and plants, along with 2,000 lambs and plenty of cereals, as well as for an overall holistic family approach.

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