Browns Ferry Gardens and Marietta Gardens.

     Well, what a difference a week makes.  Not the best of weeks though.  Here in northeast Ohio we are in a bit of a dought.  We did get some rain this morning, but it hardly put a dent in the dry, cracked ground.  Today is June 17th, and typically the only thing in bloom in our area would be Stella d'oro's, but I have

most of my earlies in bloom out front with a good mixture of new arrivals.  I have to say due to the early warm up it seems the height of scapes, branching and bud count is way off.  It seems some daylilies are not their usual selves and this season may not be a memorable one.

     So, let's get on to some more positive stuff like my trip down to South Carolina.  Boy did I enjoy my visits to Browns Ferry Gardens and Marietta Gardens. 

      Let's start with Browns Ferry Gardens.  Heidi Douglas was so nice showing me around the garden.  Charles Douglas was at work, so Heidi made sure I got to see everything in their program and other named daylilies.  Browns Ferry was one of the first daylily sources I used to buy daylilies from.  I have their catalogs dating back to 1998. (have I ever mentioned I have a huge daylily catalog collection?) Anyway, I have featured at the top of the page an over all picture of the garden and right below it I put a photograph of Ribbons of color, a Heidi Douglas introduction.  I look forward to going back in the future and I have to say that Browns Ferry Gardens is one you shouldn't miss. One of my favorites.

     Not too far from Browns Ferry is Marietta gardens in North Carolina, owned by John and Faye Shooter.   Faye has always been very kind and always responds to every one of my emails.  John Shooter will make you laugh, and is very proud of his advancements in diploids.  He should be.  I'm pretty sure he is the first to hybridize diploids with edges.  Some of the green throats on his diploids were just amazing.  I look forward to purchasing more Shooter intros in the coming years.  I should also mention I have Marietta Garden catalogs dating back to 2001.  The Shooters helped me build my daylily collection up over the years as well.  The garden photo at the top part of the bottom of the page is of Jamie Gossard's Heavenly United We Stand.  The middle bottom photo is of John Shooter's introduction, Sunrise Shadows which is a giant 8" flower.  Very beautiful pink diploid and one you should put on your must have list.  So that brings this installment to a close.  I hope you enjoyed this trip through some special gardens.

     I had to put a picture of one of my favorite purples at the very bottom of the page, Imperial Wizard from Steve Moldovan, photographed in Browns Ferry Gardens.  What an amazing purple!

My South Carolina vacation.

     I just got back from my vacation to South Carolina and I am EXHAUSTED!  I had a great time!  I was able to visit Browns Ferry Gardens and John and Faye Shooter's Marietta Gardens.  The picture at the top of the page is of a clump of Mary's Gold at Marietta Gardens.  What a beatiful daylily Mary's Gold is!  Too bad it's sterile.   I've tried to cross on it and use it's pollen with no luck.  I also featured a quick photo at the bottom of the page of James Townsend's 2012 introduction, Veto.  I will write more about both my visits to those previously mentioned daylily nurseries, but for now I need some rest.  Hope you are all having fun with your gardens!

Attack of the daylily field!

     You are probably wondering what I mean by that title.  Well, if you read last week's post, you saw that I had a deer get into my garden and do some damage.  That same deer (my wife and I are pretty sure it's the same deer) has been just going up and down our street feeding in the same yards.  As it stands right now I have baggies on stakes from a company called Green Screen, these plastic containers on stakes from a company called Sweeney's, and I have spread Deer Scram granules.  Three deer deterrents, costing me some serious cash.  So far, it seems to be working, but the deer continues to show up feeding on the neighbor's yards.  Today the deer jumped into some one's back yard that had a Chihuahua on a leash in the backyard.  That dog wouldn't have stood a chance against that deer.  It's beginning to concern me enough that I think I will contact our city's animal warden.  I don't know if they are capable of perhaps tranquilizing the deer and moving it to one of our local parks, but I have to at least call.  The reason we are having a problem with our deer population is because there are no natural predators.  No coyotes for some miles.  I wish we did have some way of keeping the deer out of our suburbs. 

      So, if you thought that wasn't enough....this morning I walk out into the front yard and a ground hog goes running across the daylily field.  As far as I can tell the ground hog isn't burrowed into my front yard.  None the less I don't want him around digging holes either.  I have trapped one in the past couple years using a have a hart trap and some green apples.  I then transported the little guy to our local park.  Hopefully he's having a great life out there. 

      Then to add insult to injury, I have people that walk by my property all the time since I live in a suburb where the houses are all right next to each other.  There was this family walking by and this little boy goes running up one of my daylily aisles.  My wife looked out the window and yelled for me seeing this kid in our front yard.  Luckily his mom got him to come out before he could break any scapes.  A broken scape is a hard thing for a daylily hybridizer to have to deal with.  Be it from deer, groundhogs, or little kids.  Don't get me wrong, I love children, just not running out of control through the garden as it comes into peak bloom. 
     Moving along....I thought I would post a picture at the top of the page of some of the first blooms.  The three in the front are Dan Trimmer's Calamity Jane, and the white one in the foreground is Ballerina on Ice from Vic Santa Lucia.  The old fashioned golden orange daylily below it is an old favorite of mine, Orange Prelude from a hybridizer by the name of McEwen, hybridized in 1974.  I really love Orange Prelude for it's color and the fact that it is one of the first daylilies to bloom each year.  I put a picture at the bottom of the page of my seedling bed.  I weeded my seedling bed this past week and put mulch on it.  Weeding a seedling bed is a herculean task sometimes.  It is very difficult to get the weeds out from in between the tightly packed seedlings. Some hybridizers prefer to use trays to start their seedlings out and I understand that approach.  I guess I have my system for now.  I try and find one of the most well drained areas in the yard and plant all my crosses from the last year.  This one area seems to work the best.  Well, there's my week in a nutshell.  Hope everyone is enjoying some great bloom without the nuisance of deer and other pests.

Happy Memorial Day!!!( Deer damage and crown rot!)

     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.

2 to 3 weeks ahead of schedule!

     Well, it's been a weird season to say the least!  We had 80 degree temps in March. (nearly unheard of here in northeast Ohio.) An extremely dry April, and a warmer than average April and May.  Is this the new normal?  It's very strange.  Even stranger is the fact that the daylilies are starting to scape.  Usually this doesn't start here until June.  I have featured a photo at the very top of the page of a couple clumps starting to throw up scapes.  The photo right below it is of my front yard being watered.  I don't have an intricate sprinkling system....just a hose with an oscillating sprinkler attached to it.  For as small as my property is, it does the job.  In addittion to the daylilies scaping faster, they are growing faster.  Check out the photo at the top part of the bottom of the page.  The seedlings planted along the fence were just lined out there last fall.  To have that much increase in such a short amount of time is amazing for us here in Ohio.  I wouldn't be suprised to see some throw scapes.  Bloom in one year.....hey, this isn't Florida!  Finally at the very bottom is a photograph of the damage a raccoon did to one of my deer preventative baggies.  The baggies are made by a company called Green Screen.  They are pretty good at keeping deer away, but not 100%. They are filled with meat meal powder and the damn raccoons love to tear them down and eat up what's inside.  It's a tough battle to grow daylilies, but the rewards are worth it. 

      Finally I just wanted to mention that I spent some time over at Roy Woodhall's today with some other friends including Wayne Listkowski, Dan Robards, and John Hric.  Wayne, Dan, and John did the lion's share of weeding a main bed at the Moldovan gardens.  I showed up late, so I was of little help.  I think what I enjoyed the most was sitting around and talking about Moldovan daylilies with the group.  Dan Robards brought along a patterned seedling that was out of this world.  I wish I had a photograph of it, but I didn't bring my camera.  Sensational job Dan!  Maybe Dan will email me a few pics of his seedlings because I think he's gonna have some incredible introductions in the future!  Hope you all had a nice weekend!

New daylily seedling

     Well, the weather here in Ohio has been gradually getting better and it's been a real busy week juggling my two jobs and trying to weed the garden.  Anyway, I received an email from my friend Bill Waldrop with a photo of a daylily seedling out of my 2012 introduction A.D. Lewis.  A photo of A.D. Lewis is featured at the top of the page.  I know to most it just looks like another tall dark red daylily, but I assure you when you see it in person it does tend to catch your eye as you look across the garden.  Bill's photo of the seedling is featured at the bottom of the page.  I like how A.D. Lewis passed on it's dark red color to the seedling.  It will be exciting to see the daylily in person someday at Bill Waldrop's

place.  Nice work Bill!

Great garden shots

      Well, in all the time I have been going to look at daylilies I have seen some incredible gardens.  There is nothing quite like a daylily garden at peak bloom.  Instead of showing you individual daylilies this week from one hybridizer or another, I thought I would show you some nice garden shots I have taken over the years. Today's post may be a little short, because of all the daylilies I've had to plant lately, combined with a busy work schedule.  I'm about to turn 49 this month, and while I'm not exactly old.....some days my body just lacks the energy I might have had in my youth. 

       O.k., so at the very top is one of my favorite daylily gardens, Floyd Cove, now owned by Guy and Karen Pierce.  That photo was taken in 2010.  Right below it is a local AHS display garden called Rock Bottom Farms, located in Middlefield, Ohio.  At the bottom located at top is a picture I took in Steve Moldovan and Roy Woodhall's garden.  That photo was taken in 2009.  Below that photo is a nice garden shot of my friend, Curt Hanson's garden during peak bloom in 2010.  Hope you enjoyed the photos.