Move It Monday and How I am Keeping Myself Out of Daylily Scope Creep This Year

Happy Monday! I hope your weekend was great!

Today is Move It Monday in the townhome gardens. Now that it is daylily bloom season, I want full and easy access to the daylilies that I hope to use for crosses. Cloches are off of all the seedlings now and today it was moving day for the remaining two pots of seedlings – the ones that will eventually go to the historic cemetery. The pots are now on the patio, and I am considering when they should be planted at the historic cemetery.

My original plan with the seeds in those two pots was to direct sow them, but last year I noticed seedlings did not do well at the historic cemetery. I am thinking that maybe they will be ok to plant soon but there is no sprinkler there so anything that is planted needs to be watered by hand, daily, and call me lazy, but that is not my favorite. Not talking hose here, but rather, carrying gallon containers of water in the heat. So, the seedlings will stay on the patio, probably until fall planting.

I also want to pull more of the forget-me-nots in that area, but not too many. Besides liking their look, in moderation, I have noticed the bunnies and squirrels do not seem to like Forget-me-Nots. If I were to venture a guess, I would say it is because they have a habit of sticking to things. I don’t like that, and I can imagine they don’t either. So, some Forget-Me-Nots will stay, but a lot will be pulled.

Back to the historic cemetery topic, it has been a fun season so far to see things that were planted a few years ago start to shine. One of those is the Purple D’Oro divisions. Yesterday Purple D’Oro bloomed for the first time there. I had a feeling it would. So glad I got to see it!

So, with the daylilies in bloom in all the gardens, and opportunities for crosses beginning, I am reminding myself of my self-imposed limits. Here’s the story:

Last year I way overdid it with daylily crosses. I was doing a bucket list experience, and doing the crosses was incredibly fun. I was imagining wonderful gardens down the road – chockablock full of gorgeous daylilies in the years ahead. I was even toying with the idea of something beyond that, but I wasn’t decided on anything for sure. Without a serious plan, and having a wonderful time, I got myself ahead of my skis. I knew the process to cross the daylilies, and I had just enough years under my belt to get a lot of crosses successfully to pod and then to harvest. A lot. The crosses were very successful – in variety and volume. Pods were abundant, and the harvest went well into October. It bit into my planned fall activities and then kept on biting through to labelling and recordkeeping and proper storage and most of all planting (x 2 because I did not do direct sow). I learned my lessons. I have parameters this year.

• I can do four new varieties of crosses that go to pod this year, but with the additional requirement that it has to have at least one parent that is one of my own seedlings. A little extra challenge.
• I can do one repeat cross that was successful in the past.
• I can do retries of previous fails. There are only a few this year because two of my legacy daylilies are either aging out or just taking a rest this year.
• I can only do crosses until July 23 this year.

And that’s it.

Enter the first opportunity for a cross this year.

This is Carpenter’s Choice.

I like the colors. The raspberry is what I originally bought it for. And although it does kind of color morph as the day goes on, which is normal, it starts the day way more to red. That gave me pause yesterday as I considered a cross with the other available tetraploid – Equal Opportunity.

As I pondered the decision, I considered some additional attributes I like about Carpenter’s Choice:

• I like the way the back petals (I should say sepals 😉 ) increasingly curl as the day goes on, similar to Autumn Red’s habit.
• One of Carpenter’s Choice’s parents is lavender, which I would like to see in a cross with Equal Opportunity.

It did take me a bit, but I eventually decided yes to the Equal Opportunity x Carpenter’s Choice cross. Something about the lavender was the deciding factor. And:

• I have capacity within the four new crosses.
• Equal Opportunity is one of my own seedlings, a self-seed from South Seas.
• I am definitely within the timeline.

So that was decision one. If I get a pod, it will be counted as #1 of 4 new crosses this year.

Here’s a couple additional pics of what’s going on in the gardens.

I hope you have a wonderful week!

Until next time,

Be Blessed!