Between the showers and the downpours I have been attempting to duplicate a project I easily completed last year in several days. That’s planting a large daylily bed.
I started what I thought would be a leisurely project about the middle of August. After all, what’s several days when you have six or eight good planting weeks left? As September draws to an end I still need several planting hours before I go for mulch.
Last year’s project was on a rather steep bank at the end of my lane. I spent all spring and summer on weed control before planting. That was time well spent, as the daylilies have grown rapidly without much competition or hand pulling.
For years they have claimed that we had re-blooming daylilies besides Stella de Oro the little almost orange one that is frequently planted. The experts will quickly point out that Stella isn’t a re-bloomer. It just blooms, rests and blooms again throughout the summer. A true re-bloomer will bloom randomly after the main flush is over in June. I guess you really didn’t need to know that.
Fifteen years ago I planted some of the claimed re-bloomers and watched nothing happen after the main flush. The second year I violated my beliefs and fertilized and watered them heavily and I got a reasonable re-bloom. Despite my beliefs, fertilize and moisture aren’t wrong on daylilies.
Back to last year’s planting. The soil was at best average, the weed control good, good spring and fall moisture with a dry month in between and memory loss as to whether they were fertilized. They produced an amazing first June flush which was tardily removed several weeks after bloom ended.
To my amazement there has been a steady reappearance of buds and flowers. Granted, moisture has been plentiful , but I am beginning to think that the day of re-blooming daylilies are really here. The second bed is at my sons in a similar site and soil situation and I am seeing an occasional September bud on plants just weeks after planting.
If you are thinking that could be an expensive project, you could be right or wrong. All perennial gardening is tradeoff of time or money. With daylilies, the time can be rather short. My guess is that any good sized plant you might buy could/should be cut into two or three pieces. A single fan/stem will produce a nice plant within a year.
Shallow planting will also encourage rapid growth in daylilies and you then would have a plant that could be divided into multiple plants by the second year.
When I see the sun I will finish my son’s bed. If the month still starts with an S or an O I will tackle a third one near my house. That one will be populated by dividing plants started over the last two to five years.
My fear is that the world won’t be large enough to accommodate all the plants when I have to divide three beds not too far in the future.
