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.

Growing seedlings fast!

                       Gossard seedling (Dragon Fang X Rosey Spiketail)

     Back in the summer of 2014, I visited Jamie Gossards place.  It was a great time to see Jamie's daylilies and he had so many awesome seedlings.  The one pictured above was my favorite.  It was a toothy cross of his Dragon Fang X Rosey Spiketail.  Had the biggest teeth of any seedling blooming there and such a nice purple color.  Jamie was nice enough to share pollen with me and I took it home and made a bunch of toothy crosses.  I wanted those seedlings to grow as quickly as possible and here in Ohio it is usually a slow process.  However I have one area where the seedlings seem to mature faster than any other area.  You will see in the pictures below how I planted these seedlings in June and by years end they looked like blooming size mature fans.  For the record, I did use Nutricote 18-6-8, and Multicote as well to help them along quickly.  I usually don't fertilize the seedlings in the main bed, so I can see what they look like in natural garden conditions.  There are some other seedlings mixed in as well.  Here is what they looked like over the year:

                                      First planting, 6-16-15.
                                 

                                      First planting 6-16-15.

                                      Ten days later 6-26-15.

                             Month and couple weeks later, 7-30-15.

                                  Almost two months, 8-10-15.

                                                      8-30-15.

                              Almost three months later, 9-13-15.

                                     Three months, 9-28-15.

             Almost four months, 10-8-15. You can see they are very crowded now. That's Nicole Devito's Undefinable blooming in the upper left corner of the picture.

                                            Winter time, 2-9-16.
                                           
                           

                                          Early Spring 3-14-16

     Well, I'm hopeful and excited to see these bloom in the coming season.  They are getting pretty crowded, so I will have to line them out to give them a better chance to mature and see them in normal garden conditions.  Hope you enjoyed the picture sequence.  

Great landscaping daylilies.

                                 Mister Butters (Judy Davisson)

                                 Banana Smoothie (George)

      So, what defines a great landscaping daylily?  In my humble opinion, a daylily that has great bud count, branching, and visibility from a distance.  The scape must be sturdy and tall.  It's one of those daylilies that when you look across a field your eye is drawn in to that particular daylily.  Yellow daylilies are probably the most visible in the landscape, especially from a distance, but I have included some other colors below that I would consider as great landscape daylily colors  I'm sorry if I forgot any of your favorites, but hopefully this will give you some ideas of some wonderful daylilies to add to your landscape or garden.

                      Agnes Mary Dowdell (Steve Moldovan) yellow daylily.
 

    Big Bird's Friend (Jamie Gossard) A great landscape daylily and parent. Photo taken at Jamie's.

                           Thoroughbred Sunlight (John Rice)

       Voluptous Blonde (John Rice) You can see the great bud count and branching.

                    Shabby Chic (Shirley Farmer) The bud count is incredible!

                                 Shabby Chic (Shirley Farmer)

                                 Stop the car (Jamie Gossard)

                                Little Bo Peep Diploma (Curt Hanson)

            Up on the Roof (Curt Hanson) Awesome branching on this lovely daylily.

           Heavenly United We Stand (Jamie Gossard) One of Jamie's favorites.


Well, I hope you enjoyed this segment.  Not sure what I will show next, but always
want to show you new daylilies and of course the old ones that perform well in any garden.

Happy New Year!!!

                            Lewis seedling out of Desire of Nations.

                         Ripples and Reflections (Mort Morss) A favorite.


Happy New Years to all my daylily friends.  Just thought I would post a few more pictures from this past season.  I hope you enjoy them.

                       Tom Allen (an unregistered Dan Trimmer seedling)

                     Sunrise Shadows (John Shooter) Gonna miss ya John!

                       Sweet Isabella (Gerda Brooker) Love this pink.

                    Siesta Key (Jeff Salter) A nice pattern in a different color.

                                    Vivacious Spirit (Guy Pierce)

                  Sentimental Favorite (Brother Charles Rekamp) Love this one.

                  Evening Eye Shadow (Steve Moldovan) A wonderful bi tone.

                   Art Gallery Blues (Luddy Lambertson) One of Luddy's best!

                 Four Eyes (Luddy Lambertson) Another great Lambertson daylily.


Well, that should do it for this week's picture show.  I hope to highlight good landscape daylilies in the next installment.  Hope you all have a Happy New Year in 2016!!!


      

Happy Holidays!!!

                                   Barbara Mandrell (David Kirchhoff)

            Red Fortune (David Kirchhoff) A very nice red. Highly recommended.


        Happy holidays to all my daylily friends!  Hope you are having a nice holiday season.  I thought this would be a nice time of the year to post some pictures of some of the best red tetraploids from my garden this past year.  Here is a sampling:

                        Clump shot of Heavenly United we stand (Gossard)
                        Sky King and/or Sky Dragon (Gossard) in the back.

                           Tavares Towering Inferno (Pete Harry)

                         Dale Hensley (Frank Smith)

                        Sunset Drive (a future intro from Paul K. Lewis)

                          Bellagio (Paul K. Lewis 2015) A favorite of mine.

                      Ultimate Sacrifice (Larry Grace)

    Well folks it's been a mild winter so far.  We are getting some lake effect snow today.  Somewhere in the order of 3 to 4 inches, so it's just making the xmas season a little nicer.  Hope you are all having a nice holiday season.  Hope to post some garden shots after the first of the year.

Blue eyed seedlings.

                    Vertical Horizon X Paul Aucoin (Paul K. Lewis seedling)



     I've always enjoyed blue eyed daylilies ever since seeing Steve Moldovan's introduction, Piece of Sky.  Since that time there have been a lot of improvements and varying colors in the shade of color in the eyezone.  It is an exciting time to be breeding for blue and these are a couple of my seedlings.

                                 All things to all men seedling

                                All things to all men seedling

                            Donald Campbell (Paul K. Lewis 2016 intro)


Hope you enjoyed this quick little segment.  I think I will follow it up with some of my favorite red tetraploids from this past summer in the next installment.  Happy holidays!