Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Don't mix chemicals around daylilies!


      In the summer of 2014, I sprayed my nut grass with a chemical I don't want to publicly name.  That following fall I applied a coating of pre emergent weed control.  Biggest mistake of my life.  Wow, did it ever mess up the daylilies.  The photo at the top of the page is of one of the areas I spread pre emergent on.  I will even admit I applied a little too much as you can see from the picture.  For the record, I will NEVER use pre emergent around daylilies ever again.  It really screwed up their growth.  I know some people who use it with success.  For me, it didn't work and set me back quite a bit.  Live and learn.  I had a lot of nice seedlings that didn't grow last year and even regressed.  Well, life isn't without it's disappointments and last year this was my learning experience.  In the photos below you can see how it negatively affected growth for the rest of 2015.


                      Photos taken on 5-16-15. Daylilies had turned brown.

              I had sprinkled pre emergent in spots in the front.  This is what a healthy clump looked like after the pre emergent had negatively affected it.


         This is one of the better seedling beds, and what few seedlings that were in there were mostly killed.  I put some of my best seedlings there.  It was hard to watch.


     As the season was coming to a close I saw the first signs that maybe the pre emergent had washed into the soil and saw some signs of recovery.  I am hopeful next year will return to a normal growth pattern.  I hope there are no residual effects on the soil.  Time will tell.  I will return to posting pictures of daylilies next installment when I post pictures that I took from Curt Hanson's Crintonic Gardens in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.


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