What’s Up Wednesday – Asian Lily Blooms Starting – Daylily Seedling Box Countdown – Seedling Germination Successful – Garden Fun and Surprises

Happy Wednesday!

We are now coming into the latter part of the daylily seed germination watch and moving into the bloom season for the Asian lilies.

Two seedling planters remain.

As I sat on the patio this weekend, relaxing in my rocker after reducing seed plantings, I looked over at the two seedling planters and realized that is what I want next year. Enough capacity to be creative, but also a nice limit. 32 of the silicone base medium seedling pots I love to work with fit perfectly in the grey box, and 4-5 medium plant pots fit in the cedar box.

I am thankful for the expanded daylily propagation experience last year. Doing all the crosses in 2025 was a boatload of fun, something I had to try. And I am grateful for the result of that harvest as well. I still have a few stragglers so there may be additions, but I currently have 15 new daylily seedling varieties from last year’s work. Lots of potential to work with in my future daylily crosses – when/if they bloom in the years ahead. That’s good.

My garden thoughts and my garden words and my garden pictures are now shifting into well-worn territory – with a few surprises, but nothing too crazy.

This week the Asian lily bloom season started. The peach ones are consistently first, but this year, the pink ones under the Linden have returned right along with the peach ones. I thought they were in decline in our gardens, but I got a happy surprise this year. They were just rebuilding.

A couple years back, on a very hot September day, I sat with a plethora of Blue Mouse Ears hostas I had divided and needed to transplant. I had an idea. The pink Asian lilies under the Linden had been fading to almost nothing over the previous years. The Linden provided some nice afternoon shade. The Blue Mouse Ears hostas might look nice along the path at that corner! But I was whooped. Like getting dizzy whooped. My husband agreed to help. As we dug the holes for the Blue Mouse Ears divisions, we removed the few pink Asian lily bulbs we found and that was that. It was time to stop. I later transplanted the pink Asian lily bulbs to the historic cemetery, along with some fans from Purple D’Oro daylilies I had also divided at the townhouse. I made a quick little note, went to water them every other day or so, and then pretty much stopped thinking about those plantings.

Last year, 2025, I did notice some Asian lily greens were returning at the historic cemetery and at the townhome some pink Asian lilies did bloom. That was nice. But when I saw the pink Asian lilies at the historic cemetery this week, I was delighted. Even more, I was surprised to see greens from daylily “seedlings” planted with the Asian lilies. Maybe there was hope for seedlings, I thought. But today as I was planting some donated hostas, I found the marker for the Purple D’Oro self-seed seedlings. Those seedlings did not make it. The Purple D’Oro divisions did. It’s all good. I am hoping to see Purple D’Oro daylily blooms at the historic cemetery this summer. Or next 😉

Additional fun in the townhome gardens:

The Malva Zebrina Hollyhocks are growing very nicely, as is the sole seedling of my experiment planting one daylily seed at a time in tiny little pots in 6 pk trays. I am equally happy to report that the wave 2 plantings of seeds from that same cross yielded much better results – see pot next to the cloche on the ground. I am not a professional propagator by any means, but, for me, multiple, same cross seeds, planted in one pot – Golden.

And we continue to get Currant seedlings. This one may not stay. I think I need that space for daylily seedlings.

But this one probably has found a home.

And at the historic cemetery:

The historic cemetery has quite a few Stella De Oros. Last year they hit their stride and then had a lot of self-seed pods. I harvested the seeds on a whim but doubted those seeds would do anything. This spring I dumped those 80 seeds in soil in one big pot, put dirt over them, put a cloche over the top, and made sure they got water. Well … they must be meant to be! They are coming up! More every day! We’ll see what the count looks like in a few weeks. Where I will put them is very much TBD. The fence garden, both sides, are getting nice and full.

And that brings me to another fun thing – we had a nice donation of a variety of hostas for the historic cemetery. Some are already allocated for a new project, but there were a few spaces on the left side of the fence garden where I have repeatedly tried to plant seeds and seedlings, and for whatever reason, they just don’t make it. So today I officially threw in the towel on that idea and used those spaces for some of the donated hostas. Amazingly, even though that garden is in full sun for almost the full day, hostas do well there. I hope the new ones follow that pattern. They look very nice in their new location!