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.
Screenshot
For now it is the shamrocks.
Screenshot
And maybe I can bring this poor orchid back to life.
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.
We have had our February thaw, followed by a blizzard with ice underneath the snow, and now we are back into freezing temperatures. Which will be here for a while yet. How do we get through this last part of a Minnesota winter?
I try to enjoy all of the expanding daylight. The candles and lights of the holidays aren’t the ticket anymore. I get up early most days and enjoy the sunrise with some sort of hot beverage.
This last month of winter is not the month I take on a lengthy, boring, “I wish I didn’t even have this on my list” project.
We try to eat healthy, but nothing crazy depriving. My husband is an excellent cook. I am an ideas person. And a “keep the kitchen clean and organized” person. Today the idea was to use up some rotisserie chicken. I got the kitchen ready. He went to work. Fresh mushrooms, two peppers, a half bag of those tiny potatoes, the rotisserie chicken, two cans of cream of chicken soup, a dash of milk and some seasoning. Simmer for an hour. The house smells so good! And the soup/hash/concoction was so yummy!
We work to keep food treats in moderation. Not eating celery when we want chocolate chip cookies, but moderation is wise.
Have a daydream project. Mine is – you guessed it – garden planning, prepping what I can, and then blog posting and reading and replying for fun. Maybe just a tad of history. If I am so inclined.
Which leads me to ‘Hyperion’. I am daydreaming. I don’t need it. At all. And I have no idea where I would put it. But wouldn’t another diploid be fun?
Hyperion is an old daylily. It is both pollen and pod fertile. It is tall. I like its simplicity. And it is fragrant. Pink Tirzah could use a new option. In 3 years lol. Unless I buy locally. Then maybe I could get self-seed.
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!
Susan's Daily Garden 