I've heard that some growers "juice" their daylilies. Juicing means to use significant amounts of fertilizer to produce maximum blooms per scape which they can then promote on their websites. On one hand, as a hybridizer it's nice to know a daylilies potential genes but average daylily growers may never see that same potential reached.

Last fall I decided to juice my seedlings a little. This coming fall I intend to cull quite a few seedlings that I've been evaluating so I need to know their potential. I'm going to cull to give me room to spread the remaining daylilies out. Some daylilies have a low bud count even when juiced while others respond with improved performance. Knowing their potential is one more piece of the evaluation puzzle.

Seedling 15-104

Seedling 15-104 has 5.5" blooms on 29" scapes and comes from the cross (Princess Dianna X Elegant Expressions). This year it had 23 buds on 6-way branching. It's a late season bloomer.

Benvenuti Garden - ADS Display Garden

Yesterday I went with the Houston Hemerocallis Society to Benvenuti Garden, an American Daylily Society Display Garden. If you have never been to a display garden, it's something to add to your wish list. Note that you should call to arrange your visit prior to arriving. A list of Region 6 ADS Display Gardens can be found on the Region 6 website.

This garden is located in Lake Jackson and is designed and maintained by Loris Garrett and Sandy Roberts. Daylilies fill just about the entire yard. If my recollection is correct, they said they have over 1200 registered cultivars plus numerous seedlings and all is wonderfly laid out. There were numerous large clumps covered with masses of blooms. I would be remiss if I didn't also mention their unique collection of yard art which is distributed throughout the garden.

Green Anole lizard

Green Anole lizard admiring himself in a yard art mirror at Benvenuti Garden.

It rained yesterday and absolutely poured this morning around 3:00 am. Great for the daylilies but unfortunately it beat up the opening blooms so no pics today. Tomorrow should be awesome!

My work on reorganizing my daylily beds is progressing nicely. There's no rush as the actual work won't start until this fall. The reason I like to make my fall plans as bloom season is drawing to a close is that it's easier to recall how a daylily performed now rather than waiting until the end of the summer.

One thing has become painfully apparent as I work on my plan. The reorganization won't be done in a single year. In fact, I believe it will take at least 3 years to complete. I've always done all dividing and planting myself and I plan to continue this as long as these old bones hold out.

Seedling 12-005

Seedling 12-005 has 6.0" blooms on 25" scapes and comes from the cross (Pathway To Paradise X Sheer Excitement). The plants are medium in size but still produce a nice bud count (35 in 2020). It looks like it will make a good plant for borders.

Yesterday it finally RAINED and yes, I'm shouting. The rain gauge read 2.4" when it came to an end. The daylilies loved it and today most blooms showed it. Many blooms were larger than they'd been in over a week while others showed their happiness by opening multiple blooms per scape. Moon Over Tibet opened 3 and 4 blooms on almost every scape. No picture yet as it's currently heavily overcast and not enough light for decent color to be captured. Cloud cover is supposed to gradually reduce throughout the day so hopefully I can get a nice pic later.

Seedling 15-009

I really enjoy taking pictures of daylilies. Every once in a while things come together to make a picture a little special. The perfect form of the bloom, the early morning lighting, and the angle of the bloom from the sun combined to make this my favorite picture so far this season.

Seedling 15-009 has 6" blooms on 25" scapes and comes from the cross (Mississippi Memento X Thomas Tew).

Three weeks of daytime highs in the 90's have started the summer foliage die off a little early this year. I suspect it's also speeding up the blooming process. This will probably result in the number of blooms each day dropping off earlier than usual and lower bud counts on some rebloom scapes. You can't tell that from the garden however as it is still full of blooms every day although they do appear to be smaller in size. This is normal after extended high temperature periods. The heat also tends to fade the colors on some daylilies.

Seedling 11-094

Seedling 11-094 is probably the 'whitest' daylily I grow. It's not pure white as you can probably see - there is a slight pink blush to the petal color. It has 5.5" blooms on 27" scapes and comes from the cross (Daydream Spirit X Lacy Border). I currently have it planted where it receives a fair amount of shade early in the morning. This makes the bloom look very white indeed (IMHO).

It has been a good year in my garden. Perhaps it's because I divided very few clumps last fall or because I might have been a little more generous with fertilizer but it seems like there are more blooms in the garden than in past years and the blooms are great.

I believe we're now starting to pass peak bloom but the garden is still full of color. I measure peak bloom by the number of 5-gal buckets of deadhead blooms each evening and it's now at 3 full buckets whereas a few days ago I was getting about 3 and a half buckets.

Saturday, several of the Houston Hemercallis Society members visited my garden. While it would be enough for me to just enjoy the garden, it's always nice when others join me.

Seedling 13-009

Seedling 13-009 is a prime example of why it's so hard to cut back the number of daylilies in the garden. I've grown 13-009 for years despite it having only 7-9 blooms per scape. It also doesn't increase and remains just a single fan in the garden. The blooms are quite consistent with most looking like this. Nevertheless, it's now on the elimination list for this fall's reorganization.

For the past week the temperatures have been unusually warm, more like mid June than mid May. The heat speeds up the blooming cycle with many scapes sporting more than one bloom. While it makes the morning garden look great it could result in a more condensed bloom season. The early onset of daytime temperatures into the mid 90's means the end of hybridizing for all intents and purposes. While it is possible to set pods with temperatures over 90 the pods are few and far between and usually only contain one or two seeds.

Even with the heat, the morning garden walks have been enjoyable and I have many pictures to share as I get time.

On a positive note, we practically skipped over the prime daytime temperatures for rust formation. I've been going around 2 weeks between rust sprayings and while some cultivars are showing some rust, others are not. On a negative note, my garden tomatoes were pretty much a waste of time. They won't set fruit with daytime temps in the 90's and I suspect we are done for the season.

Seedling 16-147

Seedling 16-147 has 6.5" blooms on 28" scapes and comes from the cross (May I Have This Dance X Sarah Starchak). So far it has performed well with bud count in the mid 20's. It also poly's about 20% of the time. It's eyecatching with 4 petals and sepals.

The nice 2" rainfall we had a four days ago caused the garden to put on quite a nice show today. Pictures always come out better when taken in direct early morning sun but the weather hasn't exactly cooperated. It almost seems like mother nature is 'toying' with me. The sun will come out but as soon as I get to the garden with the camera, a big cloud covers the sun and then I have to wait for the next peek of sunshine. It slowed down the process but I did get quite a few good shots.

I've started deadheading every evening. I removed a 5-gallon pail full last night. It makes the garden look much fresher in the morning and I don't have to take time during the best part of the day to remove the old blooms. One problem that I have to deal with is what to do with the spent blossoms. They are mostly water so putting them in the city yard waste bags doesn't work. The city requires compostable bags and you can probably imagine what the decomposing blossoms can do to the bag in only a few days. I currently don't have a compost bin but I recently lost an old fig tree in the back corner. Perhaps I can repurpose the area for composting.

Seedling 15-019

Here's one of the pictures I took this morning. Seedling 15-019 has 5.5" blooms on 30" scapes and comes from the cross (Bella Vita X Frank's Red Hot Tamale).

Most of what I grow in the front yard also grows in the back yard. This year I've made an interesting observation between the front yard and back yard performance of many of the same cultivars. In many cases the back yard plants have a lower bud count than the same cultivars in the front yard. While there can be various explanations for the difference, I believe the primary reason is the back yard soil consists of a high percentage of sand and small rock particles which drains exceptionally well. While I try to provide the same amount of water in the front and back, the soil in the back dries out much faster meaning the daylilies don't end up with the same amount of moisture.

The soil composition was the result of some experimentation I did some years back to improve drainage. You win some, and you lose some... In any case, as I revamp the back beds starting this fall I'll be adding lots of compost to help the soil retain moisture.

Seedling 12-066

Seedling 12-066 has 5.5" blooms on 24" scapes and comes from the cross (Catching The Light X Lacy Border). The golden yellow petal edging has a nice amount of green.

Garden reorganization - part 3...

After careful review, I decided the front yard beds were not candidates for reorganization as the the plant spacing was done to fit into each bed's irregular shape. The back yard beds however are double row plantings and they are the ones where I can make some changes. I won't bore anyone by going into the math aspects but in the end I decided to increase spacing in the larger foliage bed by about 2.5" and by about 2" in the other bed. Not a huge difference per plant but even this will result in a 20% reduction in the number of cultivars in the beds. I'll also change the plants in one row of each double row to be offset. This staggered planting will give each plant a little more room while only eliminating 6 additional cultivars from the garden. Oh, the joys of being a "hemerholic" with only a city lot to plant on (LOL).

The last piece of the puzzle will be to decide which of the seedlings will have to go. This decision will be made over the course of this bloom season based largely on how they perform. I suspect the final cuts will be difficult as I have quite a few seedlings that I know will never be registered but I grow them just because I like them.

Seedling 14-006

Seedling 14-006 is the first seedling I've put on my list to eliminate this fall. Occasionally, it can produce a nice bloom like this one but most of the time the blooms 'hang' and won't open without me prying the petals apart. That just isn't acceptable and with the planned reductions, this is one that will definitely be eliminated.

Continuing the garden reorganization thread...

The only way for me to allow more room between the daylilies is to reorganize the beds. This means calculating how many daylilies will fit in each bed given an increase in spacing between each cultivar. I realized that some cultivars will need more space than others as they either have larger foliage spread or the cultivars multiply rapidly. To accommodate them, I've made a list of cultivars with leaves over 30" in length and plan to locate them together in one of the larger beds. I also made a list of the few cultivars I grow with smaller than average foliage and will group them together to avoid larger foliage shade.

The only cultivars that currently have proper spacing are the ones with smaller foliage. The mid-size plants need more spacing while the large-size plants need quite a bit more spacing. So it's obvious that I'll have to eliminate some of the remaining seedlings from the garden. I'll continue this thread in the next post.

seedlings 16-106 & 16-069

I'm starting to get one or two new cultivars blooming each day but the weather has not cooperated with picture taking. Cool mornings (upper 40's), high winds (which rob the plant of the moisture needed for lush blooms), and a thunder shower about daybreak today means no good photos. So today's pic is again from last year. Seedling 16-106 (left) has 5.5" blooms on 25" scapes and comes from the cross (What Fun X (Orange City x Caribbeam Magic)). Seedling 16-069 (right) has 5.5" blooms on 27" scapes and comes from the cross (Unspoken Love X (Exotic Treasure x (Hedwig's Eyes x Spacecoast Gold Bonanza))).

Houston... we have a problem. Ok it's not a "bad" problem but is's something that I need to address. I've known about it for years but haven't had the time to fix it. Actually there are a couple of related problems.

Being a hybridizer's garden, plants have been crammed together to maximize the number of cultivars and seedlings in each bed. While I was actively hybridizing, plants seldom stayed in the same place more than a couple of years before they were dug up either to divide, relocate, or replace. So I had few large clumps. Now however, I divide pretty much only when the clump gets too large or I want to donate some to the local daylily club for their sales. The result is the clumps are merging together making it difficult to properly spray the undersides of the leaves for rust. The other problem this creates is because not all daylilies have the same size foliage. Smaller foliage daylilies can be shaded by larger foliage resulting in the inability to show their true potential. I've been trying to trim off some of the offending foliage but that is a temporary solution at best. The garden really needs to be reorganized. More on this in another post.

Seedling 12-089

Seedling 12-089 (pic is from 2021) has 6" blooms on 26" scapes and comes from the cross (Cimarron Rose X Priscilla's Smile).

The first bloom of the season came about 5 days ago. Unfortunately as is so often the case, it wasn't very photogenic. For some unknown reason, the first few blooms of the season always have narrower than normal petals and uneven form. Today however it decided to show up to get it's picture taken. Most years, seedling 15-002 is the first to bloom and this year was no exception. It has 5" blooms on 28" scapes and comes from the cross (Mississippi Memento X Calamity Jane).

Seedling 15-002

I was glad to see the green anole lizards back again this year. The Cuban brown anoles are now in Houston and being faster and more agressive they eat the young green anoles. Hopefully they can co-exist in the daylily garden.

It's now a waiting game... waiting for the daylilies to start blooming. It won't be long as I'm starting to see a little color on a few of the buds. I'm seeing new scapes almost every day.

Today I did a rust preventive spraying today using Azoxy 2SC Select and Dithane 75DF. It's amazing just how much the daylilies have grown since my last spraying 12 days ago. Then it took 7.5 gallons of spray to do the garden but today it took 10 gallons. As I made my way around the garden I found active rust only in a few places. This got me to thinking as to why these pockets of rust were showing up with the rest of the daylilies being rust free. It turns out that in most cases, the rust is in those 'hard to get' areas like where a number of large foliage daylilies are planted too close together making it hard to give the undersides of the leaves a tood spraying. So I concentrated on that today and we'll see if that improves things in another couple weeks.

On a non-daylily subject, another hawk is setting up housekeeping in the next door neighbor's oak tree. That explains what happened to the mocking bird, cardinals, and doves that were around a couple of weeks ago. They've moved on to safer places.

Seedling 15-104

Seedling 15-104 has 6" blooms on 26" scapes and comes from the cross (Princess Dianna X Elegant Expressions).

A couple of days ago the winds finally died down long enough for me to spray for rust. I used a mix of Cleary's 336F and Dithane 75DF along with a surfactant. I also added the last of my Bonide Systemic Insect Control because I had recently seen aphids mounting a comeback on some of the clumps. Previously I had cut back the foliage to around 10-12" to remove some winter freeze damage. The reduction in foliage allowed me to spray the entire garden with a single tank of mix (around 7.5 gallons).

I really enjoy walking the garden at this time of year. The foliage is lush and green and hints at what's next to come - scapes covered with lots of fat buds. Last year we had a long hard freeze in February that had a negative impact on the blooms. There were fewer blooms and much less rebloom than normal. This made for a somewhat disappointing bloom last year but it gave the daylilies a longer time to recharge. I always over estimate how the daylilies will perform each year, but I believe this longer recharge will result in a better than average bloom this year. Only time will tell.

Seedling 15-019

Seedling 15-019 has 5.5" blooms on 30" scapes and comes from the cross (Bella Vita X Frank's Hot Tamale)

I have scapes! Yesterday I found a couple of scapes on one of my seedlings. Seedling 15-002 has been first bloom of the season several times over the past 7 years and signifies that bloom season is just around the corner.

I had a partial bag of Super Phosphate that kept calling me to be spread around the garden. I had spread some time-release fertilizer around each clump last fall so a light sprinkling of the phosphate now didn't seem to be excessive. I used a home-made fertilizer shaker from an 8-oz plastic rice jar with small holes drilled in the screw on cap. This shaker gives an even application and provides the ability to control the amount of fertilizer spread based on how hard it's shaken. Application timing was good because there was a little light rain this morning which should soften the fertilizer so that it can be more easily disolved by tomorrow's predicted heavier rain.

Seedling 12-087

Seedling 12-087 has 6" blooms on 25" scapes and comes from the cross (Cimarron Rose X Priscilla's Smile).

This morning as I was finishing cleaning up my last daylily bed, I pondered why I was so far behind on my spring to-do list. Is it because I work slower now or because I tend to quit for the day earlier than I used to? Could it be that I'm putting more things on my to-do list or that I'm no longer good at multi-tasking. Could it even be that time really does pass faster as one gets older? I decided that it's probably all these things (except for time passing faster... I haven't seen anything to confirm that yet).

In any case, the daylily beds are all cleaned and looking good. There's only a little rust but it's apparent that I need to start preventative spraying to keep things looking good.

Seedling 12-017

Seedling 12-017 typically has 5.5" blooms with occasional blooms up to 6". Bud count can reach the low 20's on 24" scapes. It comes from the cross (Hedwig's Eyes X Crazy Ivan).

I finally decided to go ahead and cut back the daylily foliage. It turned out to be more time consuming than I though because so many of the cultivars are now sizable clumps. Looking back at the finished front yard, it looks 1000% better. I also discovered that some of the older lower leaves were showing signs of rust which was difficult to see with all the new growth. I guess I'll have to spray as soon as I finish trimming the daylilies in the back yard.

Seedling 13-091

Seedling 13-091 is one of the latest bloomers in my garden. It typically starts blooming at the end of May. It has 6" blooms on 32" scapes and comes from the cross (Piping Rock X Jennifer Trimmer).

During the past few weeks there have been several light freezes which resulted in damage to the foliage on some of the more tender daylily cultivars. This means I have a decision to make. To cut back or not to cut back the foliage. Many growers always cut back their foliage and remove some of the remaining older leaves. The new spring growth soon makes the garden look lush and fresh. Also, as rust is most prevalent on the older leaves, removing some of the bottom leaves helps reduce the amount of rust in the garden when the temperatures warm up.

In the past I have always refrained from cutting back my daylilies. I believed that the plant would have to use energy stored in the roots to replace the lost foliage - energy that would otherwise be directed to producing blooms. More recently however I've been contemplating if the possible reduction in spring rust would make up for the energy used to produce new foliage. It makes sense that healthy rust-free foliage would result in a healthier overall plant. I still haven't decided on what I'm going to do.

Seedling 16-097

Seedling 16-0907 has 5.5" blooms on 25" scapes and comes from the cross (Wonder Of It All X While Cherry Round Up)

The Houston Hemerocallis Society asked me to speak about daylily hybridizing at one of their meetings. The club has a couple of new members who are interested in hybridizing so at last week's meeting, I made a presentation. At least one of the new members appears to have caught the hybridizing bug and the other also seems interested. While preparing the PowerPoint, I realized just how much I miss the excitement of seeing new seedlings bloom for the first time. I'm still growing and evaluating some of my existing seedlings but I haven't bloomed anything new for about 5 years now. I am SO tempted to make some crosses this year. I must be crazy... I can hardly keep up with what I've got (smile).

Seedling 12-025

Seedling 12-025 has 6" blooms on 27" scapes and comes from the cross (Hedwig's Eyes X Crazy Ivan).

The other day I was talking with another local daylily 'fan-addict' (pun intended). He mentioned that the most recent light freeze hadn't caused any noticable effects on the daylily foliage whereas the previous light freeze had caused freeze burn to a fair number of plants. The low temperatures for the two freezes were the same (29 F) so there must have been something else in play. After some further discussion we came to the conclusion that the difference could possibly have been frost. The most recent freeze came during a period of very dry air so no frost was seen. The previous freeze however came on the heels of a rainy period so humidity levels were high which probably resulted in a lot of frost. No proof here, just an interesting observation.

I have an Althea bush that I've been growing in a pot for years. A couple of years ago I decided to transplant a couple of the volunteer seedlings that sprouted up in the pot. I had just finished building a patio in the back and transplanted them there. They have thrived there and in 2021 put on a real nice bloom show. Bottom picture above shows one of them in bloom. Probably what surprised me most was the blooms were completely different - one looked very much like the parent bush while the other was pure white. So it seems that Altheas are like daylilies in that you never know just what you will get when you grow them from seed.

A couple of years ago, I decided to try using shredded leaves for mulch to both feed the soil and provide some protection against annual weeds. My neighborhood has many oaks and other deciduous trees so a source for leaves was not a problem. I did however have to purchase a leaf shredder. The first year it took around 60 bags of leaves to produce enough mulch for just the daylily gardens. To say shredding 60 bags of leaves was a chore is an understatement! The results however were promising. As I had hoped, few annual weeds made their appearance the next year (although the perennial weeds already present in the beds came through the mulch with no problems).

The following fall I only had to shred around 25 bags to cover the daylily beds as there was still a fair amount of leftover leaves from the previous application. Oak leaves are rather slow to break down. I had planned to see if there was any appreciable improvement in the daylilies last spring but then came last February's hard freeze making any analysis of the daylilies pointless.

This fall I only shredded about 20 bags to cover the same areas and while I'm only partly through spreading, I believe this will be more than enough. I've also begun to see improvements beyond the weed suppression. As I was removing some rattlesnake weed (a perennial which has been in my garden for well over a decade) I noticed that there is now a nice population of earthworms near the surface. They are thriving and as they eat the decaying leaf mulch they are improving the soil from the top down.

As for the daylilies themselves, a warmer than normal December has resulted in bigger than normal plants for this time of year. Weather is cooler than normal now but if the weather warms back to normal we should have a very nice bloom this year.

What Love Can Do (Jarvis, 2010)

What Love Can Do has 5.5" blooms on 30" scapes. It comes from the cross (Spacecoast Starburst X Ruffled Masterpiece). Spacecoast Starburst was registered in 1998 and was an immediate success especially with hybridizers because it had a tightly ruffled edge with vivid gold wire edge. At last check, Spacecoast Starburst was listed in the lineage of 210 registered daylilies.

My last rust spraying was about a week ago and at that time I also sprayed for aphids. They always put in an appearance about this time of year. I used Bonide Systemic Insect Control which has the active ingredient 9.4% Acephate. It comes in concentrated liquid form and must be diluted before application. I've used it successfully for years.

In the "for what it's worth" department, I recently discovered that I can purchase Acephate 97UP which is a water soluble powdered form of 97% Acephate. The bottle of Bonide makes about 18 gallons of spray while I calculate a one lb. package of Acephate 97UP will make about 225 gallons and the package even costs a little less than the bottle of Bonide. I have enough Bonide for one more application after which I'm going to try the Acephate 97UP. Yes I know... it will take me a long time to use up the powder but it costs less.

Seedlig 00-048

Seedling 00-048 first bloomed almost 22 years ago. It has 6" blooms on 28" scapes and is a consistent performer in the garden. I never registered it primarily because it's not distinct (it looks like a lot of other purple daylilies IMHO). It stays in the garden because I like it.

This past summer I decided not to divide any daylilies in the fall. I had a lot going on and it looked like a good idea at the time. I did end up dividing several of the largest clumps so I could donate to the Houston Hemerocallis Society's 2022 spring sale. In hindsight, I now realize not dividing this year will mean a lot more daylilies will need to be divided this fall.

Last February's hard freeze put the kaibosh on rust throughout the spring and summer (yippee)! It reminded me of the 'good old days' before rust made its way to the US. Unfortunately, this fall it was back and I had to spray 3 times in December.

I fertilized the daylilies in late October. That was a little later than I would have liked but the unusually warm December weather kept the daylilies growing strongly and they look great.

Seedling 16-078

I still have a few pictures from 2021 that I haven't previously posted. Seedling 16-078 has 6" blooms on 28" scapes and comes from the cross (Cimarron Rose X Rose Sensation).