Well, Happy Memorial Day to you all and a special thank you to all of you who have served in the military. My Uncle Donald Campbell served under General Patton in World War 2 and I have always been very proud of that. Uncle Don unfortunately passed away a year and a half ago, but I have fond memories of hearing his stories.
Back here in Northeast Ohio we seem to be in the middle of a pretty bad drought. It hasn't rained here for about 3 weeks. To add insult to injury the temperatures are in the 90's this weekend which is very unusual for Northeast Ohio. We are usually in the 60's or 70's. The ground has dried out and is cracked. I've been doing my best to water the small yard I have. As if that wasn't bad enough, I had a deer visit my garden and lucky for me it only hit a back area where I keep most of my older daylilies. I have deer deterrents set up, but even those don't seem to stop the deer if they are determined to feed. I use baggies from a company called Green Screen, and these plastic containers you mount on wire stakes which are suppose to work for the whole season. I decided to add a third weapon to my arsenal. I spread some Deer Scram granules around the daylilies that have thrown up scapes. (see picture of the deer damage at the top of the page.)
The other thing I am beginning to see is crown rot. Crown rot isn't usually that common and a fellow hybridizer said it is a weakness in certain daylilies. There was one daylily, whose name I will not post, that got crown rot and died constantly. I had two plants sent to me directly from the hybridizer and both died from crown rot. This spring I have one daylily that is definitely showing signs of crown rot and just so happens to be a $200 daylily that I have coveted for some years now. I bought it directly from the hybridizer, so I will email him if it dies completely. If any of you have suggestions of what to do when a daylily is dieing from crown rot, I would love to hear your suggestions. Most of my new spring daylilies are doing pretty well, but this early heat isn't helping. I have featured a photo of the dieing daylily at the top of the page.
Also, I have had an early daylily bloom and I really love this daylily. The name of the daylily is Dr. Marc C. Laroche from Jeff Corbett of California. I posted a picture of it I took at Dan Trimmer's garden. It has a nice eye, some sculpting, and from what I read in it's comments, it's a good parent for teeth. I look forward to using it this year. Well, hope you enjoyed my post. Stay cool folks.
