It is time to start getting ready to plant daylily seeds. But first, the chef made brunch. Lots of vegies, and cheese, of course.
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After that delicious sustenance, it was time to start putting the new seedling mini greenhouses together.
I have decided to decorate lightly for Easter this year. I remember all the work it was to put away the full “everything out” Christmas decorations in January, and I am just not in the mood for an Easter version repeat. Seedling trays will make an early appearance this year, where the ceramic Easter eggs would normally go. But don’t worry, we still celebrate the actual meaning of Easter, every day, in our hearts 🙂
One last look before planting wave one of the daylily seeds. These seedling planters will never be this clean again 😉
The topic of decluttering and use it or lose it is always something I give attention to. Simplifying is very freeing. In addition to physical space, it also frees up mind space.
As I look back at old garden pictures and documentation it is fun to remember the different things we have had in our gardens AND it is nice to be where we are. I remember the days of fighting aphids on huge hibiscus, trying to get forced bulbs to keep from falling over, starting shipments of seeds that looked awesome in catalogues and never gave us one single vegetable, and worse, some flower seeds never even germinated. I am glad to have simplified and to be done with all of that. And I will be comfortable to finally make the call after Easter that the Malva Zebrina Hollyhock seeds were stored too long and were not viable. It is time to get to just daylily seeds. Not just this year but going forward.
I am also very happy I had time this week to make a totally new, much more simplified configuration of my garden tracking spreadsheet. Everything that needs action is in there and I can pull from the one data sheet to make pivots for specific views. That is nice, and a long time coming. Lots of data, lots of iterations.
And after a dozen hours poring over old notes and old labels and packets and photos, the only unknown left is the parentage of Hello Yellow. Something tells me that Hello Yellow is having a good belly laugh and that I will ultimately find out it was a Purple D’Oro self-seed that went to its parentage of … Stella De Oro. We shall see. That would not make sense, as it has created seed with a cross with Just Plum Happy, a tetraploid. But, I guess, it would be belly laugh funny. Given that I am not a Stella gardener.
We are forecasted to have a pretty substantial snowfall this weekend. I am thankful it seems the mass arrival of robins has not yet occurred, and I am thankful I disciplined myself to not start daylily seeds in trays. It’s not time yet.
Happy Tuesday! I hope you are having a good week so far!
We are definitely in the march to Spring. Last Friday night we had a good ’ole thunderstorm. Early Saturday morning we had a snow globe snow fall. Saturday afternoon the snowfall was well on its way to melted, and by Sunday morning it was gone. The snowplow pile from the whole winter is just a shadow of what it was a few days ago. And although we will have cooler days mixed in, and even some snow, Winter 2025-2026’s time is coming to an end.
Saturday was the perfect time to knock out some remaining garden questions I was hoping to resolve.
Over the years I have saved a lot of info from older versions of the gardens, along with lots of daylily tags (dozens). Saturday as the snow swirled around, I pulled out those saved treasures and started to sort through them. By midafternoon, everything I no longer wanted to retain was in the trash, and I was researching my remaining daylily identification questions.
As I went along, I realized some pretty great patterns were already established in our gardens. Things I had been doing for years started coming forward as additional pieces of the future plan. First up, the daylily I have been calling “Red” is actually ‘Autumn Red’. I bought and planted them, oh, probably 20 years ago. The packaging is long gone, but at one time I did a search by pictures alone and pretty much figured that is what they are. Saturday afternoon, after I had excluded all other options from my saved tags and data, I went on a deep dive of online sources and finally made the call. Going forward “Red” shall be referred to as ‘Autumn Red’. The curled petal tips, the yellow mid-ribs, confirmed a diploid, confirmed pod and pollen fertile, bloom size and scape height match, along with mid-season, diurnal, and rebloom. And it looks exactly like the pictures. Exactly.
What caught me off guard, and was kind of a delightful find, is that ‘Autumn Red’ is quite old. It was registered in 1941. It is 85 years old this year. Not hundreds of years back, but ‘Autumn Red’ is definitely not a modern hybrid. And, I am already a few years into hybridizing with ‘Autumn Red’, with 5 successful crosses to seed, as both pod and pollen parent in 2025, and a set of seedlings from a 2024 cross with ‘Autumn Red’ that I planted in our gardens last year. Now we wait to see those blooms.
I did those crosses on a whim a few years ago, proving out ploidy. That work turned into a pattern, and now it looks like hybridization with ‘Autumn Red’ is going to be the only path. Self-seed is most likely not a go. It is stingy on producing self-seed and I do not have any “Autumn Red’ self-seed that has gone to seedling. It does reestablish well from division, and I even have a note that I re-planted a single fan. I forgot about that, but it kept on doing its daylily stuff, and it bloomed last year. It seems “Autumn Red’ is great at making seed from intentional crosses and great at going to seedling from that seed if I stratify, bring the germinated seeds to seedling, and plant those seedlings into the ground in late summer. And so, that will be the ‘Autumn Red’ daylily scope.
Unfortunately, with that. I am now back to working to bring all of the ‘Autumn Red’ seeds to seedling before they go up north. Maybe I should dedicate the little 6-cell greenhouse trays I just bought to the “Autumn Red’ seeds. More likely, though, I will plant 20 same cross seeds per medium pot and whatever goes to seedling will go up north – minus a small sample for here.
As for additional results of culling through all that old daylily data, I realized “Unidentified Yellow Freebie” is most likely the ‘Schnickel Fritz’ I bought in 2020, and quickly planted, amidst a lot of other activity in our life at that time. Unfortunately, it is not at all what I was looking for, and also unfortunately, it did poorly last year. I think it is failing in its current location. Poor ‘Schnickel Fritz’ may say goodbye. I wish I had that money back lol.
As for “Peach”, I saved packaging from ‘Romantic Rose’, and that may be a match, but although ‘Romantic Rose’ meets a lot of the criteria of “Peach”, “Peach” is quite a bit lighter in color. That can happen, but I am not quite ready to make that call. We’ll see what the color looks like this year.
And, also unfortunately, Hello Yellow’s parentage will continue to remain a mystery. I definitely planted those seeds. I just have not been able to replicate it from my less than stellar retained data. But Hello Yellow stays. For sure. If need be, it can just be its pretty self.
20,000 foot view – We learn as we go. I have shipping lists and a plethora of tags that reflect my exuberant anticipation of a delightful daylily garden. And I got it. I just didn’t initially realize the documentation needs for the scope of the auxiliary hobby that evolved. Hybridizing daylilies definitely crept up on me. And daylilies plopped into the ground are great for enjoying. Not so great when life was super busy when you planted them, and your notes were hasty and sketchy.
I hope these shares are helpful, or at least fun to read 🙂
In the meantime, I am now only allowing myself 4 (not 5-7) new crosses in 2026 – until I get the scope of this daylily hybridizing thing stabilized. You guessed it – all of the new crosses this year will be with South Seas self-seed blooms. So, no new ‘Autumn Red’ crosses. And, in fact, no new diploid crosses at all.
March is here! Time to kick off the slow start to garden planting time.
Early this week I transplanted our 9-year-old, non-blooming orchid into a much smaller pot where it now is in exclusively orchid planting medium. I hope it works.
The pot the orchid was previously in now has some new “residents”. Some very old, harvested seeds from one of my previous gardens finally got to see potting soil this week. If they make it (which I highly doubt due to the age of the seed) we will have Malva Zebrina Hollyhocks in the garden here. They self-seed, so they are kind of like a perennial.
Then, in a good place after that cleanup work, I turned my thoughts to the next “to do” on the 2026 garden plan. I ordered 3 Hyperion daylilies. They, as I have mentioned in other posts, are part of the longer-term plan. They will be delivered in spring, bare root, so they won’t bloom for a year or so. That is perfectly fine. We will be patient.
And finally, although this next item was not entirely needed, and something I generally like to avoid, I am hopeful it is at least a short-term solution. As I continued to consider the volume of daylily seeds that need to be planted this spring, my mind turned toward optimizing some awkward space under support bars in the three new seedling boxes I bought last year. I measured the space, and I did a quick look online at options. Surprise, surprise, I found a good option at a good price. I made the purchase. The small 6 cell “greenhouses” will be putzy to plant, and that type of seed starting is not the norm for me, but you never know – those little seedling trays may be incredible.
And talk about incredible – as I wrote this post, the grill master was also at work. Yes, it was as delicious as it looks 😉
We are moving closer and closer into the “Do” phase of Spring gardening 2026. March starts next week, and although we will almost certainly get more snow, March also begins clean-up in the garden. Today is the last 2026 garden planning post. All that is left to share is my vision for the daylily garden I am starting up north this year.
I have been thinking about undisturbed old homesites, sometimes where the house is even gone, maybe the chimney and foundation are the only things still evident, maybe not even that, but around the homesite are sometimes daylily survivors. They found a way. No special care. Just sunshine and soil and rain.
I have been doing some research, and apparently older, more legacy, or historic daylilies do better as a whole than the newer hybrids in surviving without much care. That is what I am aiming for with the up north daylilies – not much care. So, note to self – don’t buy hybrids and bring them up north. (Sadly, many years back, I actually lost one of my initial Pink Tirzah bare root seedlings that way, in my epic fail first generation garden trial up north. Big ouch. Shall not be repeated.)
I am not interested in the orange ditch daylilies, but I am going to add a time tested, historic style daylily (Hyperion) to the townhome garden this year and begin the slow process of growing them from bare root to bloom, letting them self-seed, and seeing if I can get that self-seed to grow up north where they can naturalize. I know it will be a very slow process. Probably 5 years or more. But that’s ok. In the meantime, this year I will work on the hybrid seedling garden up north, planting the excess hybridized seeds from the Red and the Pink Tirzah cross, and see if they can make it. Those red daylilies are quite hardy. It could work. But my goal is to eventually get naturalized daylilies up north.
So now I wait. It will be a couple months until I can start the 2026 seedlings outside. I may start some indoors in trays after Easter. I did crosses with Naomi Ruth and the Peach daylily – both ways, as pod parent each and as pollen parent each, and that was very successful to seed. I may get those going indoors. But otherwise, it is waiting time now. I’ll share as we have fun things 🙂
In early January, as our dog Sandy was really struggling, I started this post. As you know, Sandy now has his “wings”. Four weeks ago, today, he got his wings. We miss him dearly. We are so tempted to adopt another dog. But those days are gone. We are being called on to a new direction. Time will tell more.
Here’s the post from early January:
Well, the time for “cozy plus” has come. We are going to reach -21 F tonight (actual temperature, not including wind chill calculations). Now, I have been out in -40F with crazy winds where the prediction was wind chills were -90 F, and let me just say, challenging yourself to walk around in a college campus at 19 years old in that weather was novel. But all these years later, -21 F is “I shall stay inside” time. And to keep my deep winter sanity, my mind is increasingly wandering. You know – a flash of remembrance of a beautiful day volunteering, working on the historic cemetery garden, a flash of a memory of picking up mulch, a flash of a memory of seeing “Hello Yellow” for the first time of the season (last year “Hello Yellow” was the first, and the last daylily to bloom). Stuff like that. So I am opening the gardening season, just a tiny trickle. Just to keep sane. I hope it works. (Going to TX right now is not an option 😉).
At the end of last year’s garden season I shared that in 2026 I was definitely not going to do as many daylily crosses as I did in 2025, and I was considering taking a year off of doing any crosses at all. I shared how much I was enjoying what the bees and birds and butterflies and wind already accomplish. I shared that I had a desire to go historic for a while, as well, and that I had located sources for those. That is where the planning left off. Since then, I am questioning if I will be able to start the historic daylily idea. The sources went crickets when I asked for availability. I did that specific ask because I saw conflicting information online, and, contrary to my grocery order when substitutions are minor, I want very specific daylilies with those orders. I did consider plowing ahead, and seeing if just ordering would work, but, honestly, I did not have peace about that. So – I am shelving that part of the 2026 plan. And that may be a good thing. I think 2026 is going to be plenty busy, and this rooky hybridizer is going to need all the capacity – energy and real estate – she can muster.
Likewise, I have a decision about another 2025 plan.
Last year I shared that at the historic cemetery there is a family site that was proposed for a garden build out. The plants were to potentially come from the main (fence) garden areas and would be perennial. I was reading about Quiet gardens and thought it was a match for the site. But as I started to plant, it felt very “off”. I will not go into the details, but I called it quits for the year. After discussion with others, the decision to call that work quits for good was made. I think it will be a maintenance issue, and I don’t want to create a weedy, confusing mess for future volunteers.
So, the new garden at the family site at the historic cemetery is off the 2026 plan, and the historic daylily buildout is off the 2026 plan (that one may have a 2027 comeback – we shall see).
And now I can plan the rest. Because I am definitely concerned about capacity in 2026 – regarding both my energy and real estate. Here’s why:
I harvested over 500 daylily seeds last fall.
Last year, from 2024 harvested seeds, I had over 75% germination and survival to planted daylily seedling.
With the exception of the set of three ‘Mahala’ daylily seedlings at the gate of the historical cemetery, which clearly had a digging incident, all the others survived to frost. From experience I am guessing 70% or so of those will survive the winter and re-emerge in spring.
In 2026 I would guess that of the over 500 seeds from the 2025 harvest, I will be very busy finding real estate for seedlings.
And last year’s seedlings will need to stay put,
and the 2024 seedlings may need dividing.
So, time to plan. And no scope creep. 2025 got outta control lol Shall not repeat.
In a few weeks I will put the 2025 harvested daylily seeds in the refrigerator for stratification. And then the season will begin.
I left that post sit for almost 2 months. I just wasn’t up for finishing it at the time.
Today, on February 26, 2026, our weather is gradually warming up. The 2026 garden plan is complete. And we are thankful for many blessings. We will focus on those and also enjoy a beautiful picture of the Red and the Pink Tirzah daylilies from last July. Oh, so fun! Hundreds of seeds from intentional crosses with those daylilies – with Red as the pod parent and Pink Tirzah as the pollen parent, with Pink Tirzah as the pod parent and Red as the pollen parent, and with other pollen and pod parents with Red and with Pink Tirzah.
May the daylilies bring many more years of enjoyment and pure beauty!
I have a lot of harvested daylily seeds from 2025. If even half of them germinate and go to seedling I will be in trouble in a few years when they start to mature. I have run out of room.
But I knew that last fall. I knew I had harvested 521 daylily seeds and did not have room for them. I knew I didn’t even have enough seedling boxes to germinate and bring them to seedling properly. I have been slowly, steadily, chipping away at a plan.
99 of the 521 seeds were self-seed from the historic cemetery, to be added back this summer. 78 of those seeds were from the existing Stella De Oros there. The Stella De Oro seeds will be direct sown in groups in that garden. I just don’t have capacity in the squirrel protected seedling boxes to germinate those. The other seeds I will attempt to bring to seedling in the seedling boxes, and then transplant them in late summer, as is my cadence. There are already other daylily seedlings I have added at the historic cemetery in past years, and they did pretty well with that method, considering that garden survives on just rainfall for watering. I have hope for another successful set of additions.
In a perennial garden a plan is needed to keep the plants healthy, not overgrown, and also always have a variety of interesting blooms throughout spring-fall each year. We are going into year 4 with the historic cemetery garden and year 23 at the townhome. As always, some dividing will be needed this year. The seedlings from years past should help to keep things interesting while the divisions reestablish. And the rotation will continue each year.
Just as I love working on the townhome gardens, I love working on the historic cemetery garden. It is a great pleasure to have made a beautiful garden to honor those who are interred at the cemetery, as well as delight the neighbors and passersby. But the historic cemetery is not either of our family’s history. We are invested in this community, but we are the first generation in our family with history here. We don’t own that land. We are not even community property owners there as we are at the townhome. Those gardens could be, or may need to be, moved at any time. They are part of my hobby for this snippet of time. A lovely hobby and a lovely snippet of time. AND, at the same time … it is time to plant our own garden. On our own land. Even separate from the townhome gardens.
It will not be smooth sailing. I failed before at a garden up north. It was a colossal weed patch ending fail from an over $300 investment. Back in the day. But quite a few years have passed. I have been studying the topography. I know the area that has decent groundwater. I know the deer have far more nummies elsewhere. A fence will be needed, for sure, and I already have some heavy-duty landscape fabric from my DIL to keep the weeds at bay. I am telling myself, “These are daylilies. They are hardy. This is the year.” Hopefully they survive. The other option is to feed the seeds to the birds lol.
Up north I will start with 80 seeds from the 116 that I have of the cross between the red daylilies and Pink Tirzah. It is the opposite cross of what worked to make seed for the seedlings I named Molly Cowles in 2025. I have a name in mind for the new cross already but first they have to succeed up north. It will not be easy. I am going to do direct sow just like with the Stella De Oro seeds at the historic garden. But I will grow the other 36 seeds (of that same cross) here at the townhouse, just in case. (Seedlings can be grouped until they crowd.)
And we will see. It just takes one to get a field full in the years ahead.
And with that, the rest of the 2025 harvested seeds will have room in our seedling boxes at the townhouse. We are a go. I have the pots, I have the soil, I have some chicken wire to cover the open seedling boxes and can easily get more. We’re set.
Time for spring!!! Yah, I know. Not quite yet.
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For now it is the shamrocks.
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And maybe I can bring this poor orchid back to life.
Hello Yellow is a daylily that has bloomed the past few years in our garden at the townhouse. It is from seed I harvested but suspect I mislabeled. Despite multiple attempts to replicate that cross, I have been unsuccessful. I may continue to try to do that in the future, but I need to move forward. Hello Yellow will become ‘sdlg’ (for seedling) for now.
The Hello Yellow daylilies are the first to bloom in our gardens, and the last. It will stay. Absolutely will stay. And it needs some “puppies”. Hopefully 5. And a “Mom” for those puppies. You know where this is going, right? South Seas self-seed anyone? And a little story time.
Alert – Now this gets sentimental. In January we lost our last dog, Sandy. He was a terrier mix, probably mostly with chihuahua. We adopted him at 1 1/2 years old as a rescue. We were told someone(s) moved and left him and his girlfriend (April), who was a couple weeks away from delivering 5 of their puppies, roaming around the halls of the apartment. They were picked up by animal control and put into a foster facility with the intention of making them available as rescues. I had worked with someone who also worked with that rescue and told her that if they ever got a border terrier to let me know. I kid you not, we had a planned trip to go adopt another dog, and I got an email from my colleague about Sandy. Sandy came home with me the next day. He was very sad to leave April and the pups, but they were also ready for adoption and went very quickly. And Sandy bonded with me within hours of bringing him to our home. We had Sandy for 14 years. He was 15 1/2 when he passed. He had a very good, interesting life where he was very loved, and, of course, pampered.
Sandy was a very endearing dog. Super cuddly to his peeps, but very spunky with other dogs. It took a bit to get him socialized with our Irish Terrier mix. I ended up between them one day and got a tetanus shot booster as a reward. They eventually made peace, and when our Irish Terrier mix passed, Sandy became an “only”. Sandy had a short stay with our son and DIL where he regained his doggy manners through being reminded of normal doggy protocol by living with their dogs. Eventually he came back to our home and was our beloved constant companion until he passed this January. He spent a lot of time in the gardens with me, and I am certain this Spring I will feel that loss intensely for a while. Time does heal, but it is a bit rocky.
Sandy was a blond dog with Apricot ears. Recently when I was looking through my latest daylily catalogue, I was oh so tempted to order at least one ‘Apricot Sparkles’ daylily and plant it where he used to fall asleep in the sun. I have had ‘Apricot Sparkles’ on and off my wish list for a while. But I held off, not quite sure. And it finally came to me. I want to work with what we have here, from when he was here, and see what I can get with crosses between Hello Yellow and all the South Seas self-seed (peach/apricot) blooms.
I fully realize this is risky. Hello Yellow is an extended bloom daylily, and the pollen is often not cooperative. The blooms open in the evening. But this is a rest and heal year. 2025 was very intense and pivotal. A nothing burger year for hybridizing would be fine. So, I am going to give it a try, crossing Hello Yellow with our apricot/peach blooms from South Seas self-seed. With any luck, in 3-7 years, we will have an area called “Sandy’s garden” where he used to sunbathe – and maybe have 5 new yellow and apricot/peach crosses in that garden. THAT would be fun! And, if not, ‘Apricot Sparkles’ will probably still be around in the daylily catalogues.
Now, about that Hyperion? Historical. Fragrant. Matching the aesthetic I am more and more drawn to. Do we have a peach diploid to cross to? Why yes. Yes, we do! Hmmm. Getting closer to making that call. Setting the components for 2027 and beyond.
Have I mentioned daylily propagation is a long game? I think so 😉
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.
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?
Susan's Daily Garden 