It is the time of year where I get to start relaxing my mind and start just following the palette of daylily crosses I have put together for the year, crosses put together depending on how and when each daylily bloomed. Yes, it is still a lot of work, but the template has been made, and now I get to spend more time really, deeply enjoying the second half of our daylily season.
Last Friday was our apex. The daylilies were blooming like crazy for days, and there were also spent blooms in various stages, still on the scapes, making pods. It is not my favorite “look”, but it is my craft. I let them do their best work, even if it means blooms that follow get a little compromised. It is actually my cue that the garden is about ready to move into the second half of the season. It is also a very good reminder to me that I am not the only one working on the garden. And nowhere is that more evident than in the self-seed blooms. They are all over the garden, too.
Side note – I need a spreadsheet to keep track of which daylilies are pollen producers only, pods only, and especially when I do a “one up” cross, either as a test or because I could not resist. And remember, not everything that worked last year is working this year, for both pollen and pod, and then there is rain and sprinkler patterns and location and age. It is … a lot. A lot that my very busy mind really enjoys. But there is even a point at which I say enough. This year it was the apex.
So back to self-seed. I cannot resist harvesting self-seed. This year we had quite a few South Seas self-seed seedlings go to bloom for the first time. I started this daylily propagation journey by harvesting self-seed, and South Seas is really good at self-seeding. (It could also be because I use South Seas pollen a lot, and that may cause self-seeding.)
All of the South Seas seedlings for all of the years up to 2023 seed harvest/2024 seedling, bloomed this year. And although I separated the years into separate plantings, I stored all of the South Seas self-seed harvest together, and the next year when they went to seedling, I planted them together, as a group, by year.
I am starting to see very different “looks” in the different yearly planting groups. The most dramatic has come through Equal Opportunity. Below are two scapes, and two different looks.
I love them both.
After seeing this year’s blooms, I get the feeling there is definitely a message go-forward. First, “Please don’t stop harvesting self seed!” (I won’t) and maybe even, “When harvesting self-seed – save, store, and plant each self-seed pod separately” (yet to be determined).
More research to come …
Susan's Daily Garden 