As I wait on spring, and as I garden plan, I am looking at my data. Lots of data. Enough that I did a pivot table last fall.
The pivot table tells me diploids do exceptionally well here at quantity to seedling from hybridization. And specifically, intentional crosses with the Red daylilies and the Pink Tirzah daylilies account for 61% of the diploid seed harvest in 2025 alone. Since I have a fair amount of the same type of seedlings already in the ground from 2024 and since daylily hybridization is a long game, and I am not sure if I will even like the results when they do bloom, if they bloom, I think I can make some data driven decisions there.
I will not do intentional crosses with the Red daylilies in 2026. I will, however, continue to allow self-seed.
Since Pink Tirzah has not produced viable self-seed in our gardens, I want to test that out in 2026. Pink Tirzah will still be a planned pollen parent in 2026, but any viable seed Pink Tirzah pods produce in 2026 would be self-seed.
Those two diploid decisions alone should get me to my goal of simplifying to something more manageable at seed harvest time. Those decisions do not give me pause at all.
With the tetraploids, however, I am going to do something I may regret in future years. I am only going to do crosses with South Seas self-seed blooms in 2026. Egads. I know. But logically, I doubt I will regret that, as I really like the South Seas self-seed blooms I am seeing so far, and there are quite a few more I am expecting to bloom this year.
So that’s it. A simplified 2026, and one that pulls me farther down the self-seed path.
Today is the day after a snowstorm/blizzard here in Minnesota and I am definitely needing some daylily cheer. I do love the beauty of a winter snow landscape, but we are in the part of winter now where it is not quite so “wow!”
You know the Grand Finale part of fireworks? Here is a Grand Finale share of the South Seas self-seed blooms we had in the 2025 garden. There were a bunch more, but these were a good representation.
This bloom was another beauty. It was from a harvested pod from South Seas self-seed. The South Seas bloom was in 2022. It went to seedling in 2023 and bloomed for the first time in 2025. I dedicated it to my friend Shirley D. I also crossed its last bloom of the season with ‘Red Volunteer’. I have 7 seeds from that cross. If it goes to seedling (in 2026) we would see the first bloom(s) from that cross in 2028-2032. Hybridizing daylilies is a long game. Soooo worth the wait, right?
Yesterday when I was reviewing February 16 pics, I had to do a double take at this one. What was it? Green in February in Minnesota?
The next pic brought more clarity.
That was not cement. It was the inside of a plant pot. And then I remembered. It was the annual big pot of forced daffodils. Here’s the story.
Forcing daffodils was super fun for quite a few years. Eventually, however, I “decluttered” that practice. And to be fully transparent, the progression was not solely with daffodils. I started with buying Watch ‘Em Grow gardens. That was kind of spendy, and the containers were cute but hard to repurpose. I decided to DIY and plant a variety of bulbs in large and medium pots for forcing. After the first few years I went to only daffodils because I was planting jumbo bags full of daffodils at the historic cemetery to repel moles. The leftovers went to the forcing pots and then got planted back at the historic garden in Spring when the ground thawed. But forced bulb stems often fall over in pots and don’t look so awesome. Last year they looked pretty bad in pots. As I planted them at the historic cemetery I decided – that was an era, and that era is done.
A few weeks ago, I was kind of missing the forced bulbs. I saw the pretty arrangements of forced tulips in a vase with the jute cord around the glass container at the warehouse store. So cute! I love that look! But rewind the tape – that jute cord is a mess when trying to wash the vase, AND I know I will never reuse that setup. I gathered my strength and discipline, reminded myself I can look, and enjoy, but also that I had already made a decision, last fall, at that same warehouse store, that I am done with forcing bulbs. To start buying forced bulbs in a glass container with jute around it that I will never reuse is a step backwards. Roll the cart forward.
Yesterday I enjoyed the pics from prior years, just like I enjoyed looking at the creations at the warehouse, AND I successfully stayed in my “now” wheelhouse. Where bulbs go into the ground, if I even buy them (rare anymore), and where worms clean the “containers” (dirt) hahaha!
The wheelhouse nowadays is mostly daylilies. And did you think I would pass up a daylily picture today? Not a chance 😉
Today’s South Seas self-seed daylily is another beauty. For my garden and tracking purposes I named it SS Light. South Seas is SS but SS is also Steamship (historical reference to ships that were prevalent during the time our area was settled). And when SS Light first bloomed, it looked to me like a light version of South Seas. I was ready to steamship ahead. It would definitely stay.
Here are three blooms from the same bunch (SS Light). I decided from the first bloom to also see if SS Light would agree to be a pod parent. Coral Majority was also blooming that day, and I could not resist. That established the cross with SS Light as the pod parent, at least for 2025. Two out of three crosses produced seed. I have a total of 10 seeds from those crosses. We will see if the seeds germinate this Spring. Fingers crossed.
Enjoy!
SS Light x Coral Majority (0 seeds)SS Light x Coral Majority (3 seeds)SS Light x Coral Majority (7 seeds)
The farther I go down the daylily propagation path, the more curious I get. That is how scope creeps, but also how experience grows. It is a balance. I am finding my parameters.
As I have shared, daylily self-seed harvesting, planting, and growing to bloom is really appealing to me. I worked lots of years with large amounts of data, and am pretty comfortable with analysis, but nowadays I like a little bit closer to granny rocking chair patio relaxing. Thinking, always thinking, but closer to appreciation, and reflection. Specifically, closer to releasing things with volume or timing stress. Creative? Yes. Absolutely, but lower key creative. Helper creative.
The South Seas self-seed blooms pictured above are super interesting. Notice that the coloring is quite similar, but the features are quite different. They are from the same year’s harvest, but, because I previously stored self-seed all together by daylily type, not individual pod, the pollinator efforts and the conditions may have been different (or not). The resulting two blooms pictured above could have come from the same pod, different seed. They could be different pods, same day. They could be same day, different pods, different pollinators (butterfly, bee …). They could be same day but different weather throughout the day. They could also be different pollinators, different conditions, days apart. Oy! And I could track some of that, but why?
For hybridizing, I do much more tracking. And going forward, how much I am willing to track will depend on how narrow I bring the scope. 5-7 various types of crosses sounds really good to me now, but if I start to try to replicate certain features, or eliminate them, more data may be helpful. However, for self-seed, I am not the pollinator (gasp!). And doggone it, the pollinators are notoriously bad at entering their contributions into my spreadsheet. They do not identify who stopped by, when, or to which bloom(s).
A little more relaxing and just enjoying for these is the message and the theme. That balance sounds good to me this year.
I hope you enjoy today’s pic, and I hope you have a wonderful day!
While we wait for Spring to arrive, above is a pic of some of our oldest surviving Asian lilies in the garden. They bloom in June. They are fading each year, and I won’t replace them, but we enjoy what does bloom each year 🙂
The same day I took the pic of the Asian lilies (above), the first daylily of 2025 bloomed – Hello Yellow (below).
Hello Yellow is a mystery. It is from seedlings I planted from seed I harvested from our garden, but it does not match up with my (admittedly rookie at that time) documentation. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought it was a Stella de Oro volunteer, but I planted the seedlings myself, from our harvested seed, and I do not have any Stella de Oros in our townhouse gardens. Additionally, Stella de Oro is a diploid, and, based on how Hello Yellow is typing out with crosses that make pods that go to seed, Hello Yellow is a tetraploid. A very picky tetraploid, only making seed from a cross to one specific type of tetraploid, but failing to make seed from crosses from many diploids. Seed being the delineator. It does make pods from crosses from diploids, and they do well for sometimes quite a while, but eventually the diploid cross pods fail. To my great disappointment I might say, because if they did succeed, I would say Hello Yellow was a one in a million cross between what my rookie documentation said – a cross between a diploid and a tetraploid. But alas! Highly unlikely successful cross. And you can bet I have tried to replicate it. But nope. Hasn’t worked.
Compounding my attempts to resolve the mystery, a bunny and/or a squirrel ate the only Hello Yellow pods that were kind of making it in 2024. But there is hope – I have two seeds from the Hello Yellow crosses. We shall see. And you can bet Hello Yellow will get priority for the few crosses I do in 2026. Already in the plan.
Even if I cannot reproduce Hello Yellow, it will stay in the garden. It is quite unique – it is an extended bloom daylily (blooms in the evening and stays blooming until the next evening), and it is the longest blooming daylily in the garden. In 2025 it was the first daylily to bloom, and it also ended up being the last.
Well … the gardens are done for the year. I knew it was coming. Our DIL had the end of their harvest up north, and I knew our second hard frost was coming here.
It did. Late last week we dipped to 28F.
The next morning, I saw the frost. I watched as the trees rained leaves. I enjoyed the beauty, the crisp air … and eventually I started at the cutback work. I have a 60 degree-ish high temperature threshold for the cutback timing. When I see the extended forecast high temperatures start to dip below that, it is time. A little can remain, things that aren’t quite ready, but it is not my favorite thing to cut the gardens back with freezing fingers. So with that, I hit it hard.
It’s a bummer that we are done for 2025.
At the same time, however, there is a “happy” bubbling up. My winter activities ideas list is full – enough that I have a comfort level I will have both fun and challenging things to keep me good. And I have started to bring out the hygge for the next six months. The (battery operated) window candles with timers are up, the few strong scented (windows open) candles are being replaced with my favorite white unscented candles, and we have already enjoyed the gentle scent of few rauchers (German incense “smokers”). Bratapfelduft (baked apple) is my personal favorite.
I have also made a pivotal daylily scope decision. I reached out to a provider of the 1762 daylily I want, and they ship in late April/May. I am adding that daylily in 2026 and starting to pivot toward the intersection of historical with my daylilies. This will be a significant change in my daylily work. I think it will be a fun challenge.
To be fully transparent, this decision all started this year with falling in love with a number of daylilies I grew from self-seed to flowering. I loved their form and simplicity. I seriously started to wonder what might happen if I ditched all the busy-ness of hybrid crossing and noting and tracking and giving up early fall freedom due to late harvesting. What would happen if I went back to just letting the pollinators and the wind and the daylilies anatomical tendencies create seeds? I analyzed my spreadsheet for exactly what space my 2025 hybridized seedlings will need in 2026 and what the 2025 seeds would need as 2026 seedlings. A LOT! I listened while my family started to call the cabin up north the hunting shack. (By now I was grumpy.) My idea of a daylily “farm” up north was fading. And I saw the tide turn. What exactly was I doing expanding my daylily work so exponentially? I was already pretty sure I didn’t want to do farmer’s markets to sell my excess plants. I knew for sure I didn’t want to ship stuff around. And the fam was increasingly sending “not really that interested in the daylily farm idea, but hey, if you want to do it, good luck” vibes. 😉 Love them! My conclusion – my life could be so much simpler!
I slowly, and yes sadly, and sometimes crankily (is that a word?), but rationally assessed the scope of daylily hobby work I LIKE to do, year-round, and I decided – “2026 goes to a historic daylily focus” – researching, gardening, and planning included.
Now, I am not trashing the work I have already started. I think that will be fun to see unfold. These things take years. The 2025 seeds, if they germinate, if they go to full seedling, if they survive the first winter, will, at earliest, here in Minnesota USA, bloom for the first time in 2027, probably longer. But I am shaping, refining, what I already have as I weave things together between the seasons and our reality. I am part of a family. And in a marriage. And hobby daylilies were starting to suck planned time and create problems. Not cool. No desire to repeat.
So that’s it. That’s why I’ve been quiet. I was enjoying early fall after the extended seed harvest debacle pushed our fall plans way too close to our family’s hunting season. I was delaying the garden cutback. And I was ultimately deciding how to move forward with the daylilies.
Here’s some fun cloud pictures to words. I was figuring out how to work with the volcano, ‘er fountain 😉
Last year I had a bit of an issue with daylily scapes being pulled down and eaten by something. Probably something with four paws, but you never know, right? I used quite a few deterrents, all safe, and it was minimally effective. Minimally.
When I put all my 2024 notes and daylily crosses info onto my 2025 daylily tracking spreadsheet, I was reminded again about how much of an issue it was in 2024 – and how much it wasn’t in 2025. At least at the townhome. The historic cemetery, well, I have shared what happened with the Mahala Felton daylily seedlings that I planted by the gate. But that is a bit different, I think. And for this post we are focusing on daylily scapes.
As the 2025 daylily season was starting to produce spent scapes, I began to have the urge to tidy up. I did not, however, do that. This year it occurred to me to me that perhaps my habit of trimming spent scapes was actually attracting playful snackers. Against my preference to clean as the garden matures, I left all scapes on all daylilies until the pod harvest season was complete for that full area.
I also introduced another deterrent this year, and that is lemongrass essential oil (diluted and sprayed on the pavers). And, of course, there are the forget-me-nots, which are also a deterrent.
We are to the end of the daylily seed harvesting season, and I can report – no daylily scapes were pulled down and eaten by critters this year, even the shorter daylilies. All pods made it maturity and were harvested by … me 🙂
I also discovered something new. Spent daylily scapes, when completely dried in place, are very easy to pull. I have a few things in the garden that share that feature, and it is very welcome. Not all of the scapes had dried when the pod harvest wrapped up, so some were cut back when I started the daylily cutback out front, but in the true garden, out back, almost all the scapes were able to just be pulled. There remains just a few from the very last pod harvests.
And with that, the greens are getting another week or so of photosynthesis before I come through and cut everything back. And trim the shrubs. And say sweet dreams. And call it a wrap.
For now, cheers to not trimming spent daylily scapes, to lemongrass essential oil, and to forget-me-nots. I am thankful for no critter interference in the seed maturing process this year.
I have now had time to sit with the data on the 2025 daylily crosses. I am a bit shocked, but not totally. I harvested 422 seeds from our gardens here. 277 seeds are from diploids. That is not surprising, as I know what Pink Tirza does. There is a reason Pink Tirza is my diploid line. This year Pink Tirza was an incredible pod parent. Last year it was the opposite – Pink Tirzah was our top pollen producer in 2024. Naomi Ruth and Pink Tirzah don’t do fantastically well together, but Naomi Ruth was a top pollen producer this year, as well. Peach also typed out as a diploid (which did surprise me – a lot), and we have seeds from Peach. And with the Red daylilies in the mix and at an overwhelming quantity of 8 clumps, red boosted the diploid numbers.
Then there are 111 tetraploid seeds. Not surprisingly, South Seas took the prize for tetraploids. South Seas is my tetraploid line for a reason. South Seas is a powerhouse. And Coral Majority, one of her children (which I did not know when I purchased Coral Majority, but bonus!) continues to amaze. In fact, South Seas may have daylily grandbabies in the next few years in our garden due to Coral Majority. Fingers crossed. We have seed. It would be kind of cool. We shall see.
And then we have 34 self-seed from our gardens. Mostly – South Seas and Coral Majority, but a few Red and Just Plum Happy.
Not in the above numbers are 99 seeds harvested from Oakwood – 78 of which are Stella De Oro and look kind of iffy, but maybe they will do something for those gardens. I will try. There are 2 Red Volunteer seeds I harvested from a Red Volunteer I planted there last fall, and then 17 seeds from some new daylilies I don’t remember from last year, but they did very well this year.
So – 521 seeds. Oof! Yah. But I have my thinking cap on. I will figure it out. Lots of other people do this, at a much bigger scale. We shall be creative. There are 4 large success crosses. The rest can go in little seedling pots. Maybe direct sow the self-seed.
All the daylily pods are harvested and there are just a few still drying. With that, I am back in one of my happy places, cleaning data on the tracking spreadsheet, creating pivot tables, slicing and dicing the data. I have a pretty good idea of the top performers – pollen and pod, diploid and tetraploid, and also what I was able to replicate, at least to seed again, from previous years crosses. Soon the 2025 seeds will all go to storage until next March when I set them for stratification.
And it occurs to me, yes, I am definitely back in my happy place. It is full of some things I have loved for years, but it includes an expansion. It includes a new happy place I created last year when I embarked on the Mahala Felton historical research. And so my new “normal” thinking was at work when I began a new search a few days – wondering about daylily history, and specifically what type of daylilies might have been around during the historical times I have been researching. A little AI inquiry ensued, and the results were confirmed. Daylily ‘Apricot’ was the first recorded daylily hybrid, in 1893. And on it went as I was fully in daylily research mode. ‘Apricot’ was the first recorded hybrid 133 years ago, with parentage in still available ‘Flava’. Flava’s origin is listed with a registration date of 1762, and that is probably about as far back as I will get, as the registrar was none other than Carolus Linnaeus, the Father of Taxonomy.
So, fun fact, ‘Flava’ was probably grown in homesteads around this area when it was being settled, but ‘Flava’s child, ‘Apricot’, would not have been in Mahala Felton’s garden, as it was registered the year after she passed, by a school teacher, George Yeld, in England.
Next, my mind went to possibly owning a ‘Flava’ daylily. ‘Flava’ (Hemerocallis lilioasphodelus) looks so sweet and is supposed to be lemon fragrant. Who wouldn’t like that? What would self-seed look like? Would it even go to seedling? Would seedlings ever bloom? And what could I do with that?
‘Apricot’, when researched, makes quite a family tree. I could get lost. I probably will at some point lol. History x Daylilies? Yeah. I will find myself hours later, emerging to find my tea is cold and I need to rest my eyes.
I see the best chance of getting a ‘Flava’ is spring. That means I have all fall and winter to research and dream. And anything I would do would be years out for results anyways. But it is a line I think would be worth at least investigating. It is a diploid, and although Pink Tirza is my diploid line, I could have a “historical line”. Right? Could I rein in to self-seed only and make room for that? It is an intriguing thought.
For now, I leave you with pictures of the last three seed pods, pulled a bit early probably, due to circumstances, but still hovering around 60 days maturity. They should be OK, and if not, they are duplicates of others that did fully mature.
Susan's Daily Garden 