Category: Tulips

And just like that

Two weeks ago it seemed like the gardens were on hold. This week things were full speed ahead. But today with a rain and cooler weather, I am once again spending my time indoors. No worries. It is a good time to finish this blog post. It is a longer one. I need to cut it off, wrap it up, insert the pics, add the tags and categories, and get it out there. Here goes.

Top of mind is still the prospective “Mahala” daylily seeds – With the seed planting underway, I am trying to figure out what I will do to protect the seedlings when they need to go into the ground. The seedling box is not a season-long option with the small seed starter cups I used for those seeds. I used special seedling cups for them, with little greenhouse style covers. I am hoping that will be very successful for germination, but if so, they will need to get into the ground within a month. The little cups will be too restrictive for their roots.

If they are successful and germinate and go to seedling, where I think I am heading is something called a “cloche”. It is a wire mesh cage topper that is placed over the seedlings to protect them. In our case that protection time would be the 2025 gardening season. The cloche solution would allow any seedlings a full season to grow and mature in the ground. Then in the fall the cloche would be removed and in year 2 forward the “Mahala” seedlings would be just like any other daylily in the gardens.

I like the cloche idea as a next step. It keeps with “simple”, and it looks nice. It is also a sustainable one-time purchase if I want to continue the early seedling process in future years, for future dedicated seeds. And it doesn’t add another seedling box to be stored over the winter, a definite bonus.

For right now I am still watching to see if we get seedlings. If we don’t get seedlings, we don’t need cloches. But, fingers crossed, we will need them.

In the meantime, the established gardens are popping, so there has been plenty to do.

In the townhome gardens, everything except two late daylilies, a few missing hostas, and two sedum, have popped, including the bushes. One day the ninebark bushes didn’t even look like they had buds. Two days later they were leafing out. And yesterday I noticed the weigelia bush is taking off too.


For daylilies, all the longtime daylilies, including those I divided and transplanted, are back. There are two daylilies from last fall’s order that I am still watching for. In a funny twist, they are supposed to be part of my “control” daylilies to compare against what works at the historic cemetery, and also, an easier way to do and monitor crosses. It is much easier to step out the door at the townhouse and do a cross than get in the car and drive to the historic cemetery. Not that I don’t intend to do crosses there. I do. But it will just be a little more time consuming. Full transparency, though? The historic cemetery garden is easily two weeks ahead of the townhouse gardens. It is an all-day sun, retaining wall, mulched garden. The two control daylilies that are missing from the townhome gardens are already up at the historic cemetery garden. I am kind of bumming, kind of thinking, “can you say extended crossing season?” We shall see what actually blooms. Hopefully both of the missing control daylilies will still show at the townhome gardens as well. One is a tetraploid, and one is a diploid. The tetraploid is one of my faves. It is one of the “parents” that are waning in the townhome gardens and also one of the “parents” of a cross I am watching to bloom this year. I was hoping to use the newly planted one this year, but eras change, and the torch may be passing to a new “rock steady”. Long story short, it will be a bit before I can fully say what we have to work with at each location for 2025.


Regarding daylily seedlings, awesome news … at all of the gardens the seedlings are back. I am especially excited to see one particular set of 2024 seedlings (an intentional cross), and am hoping it blooms this year. As I had also hoped, all of the 2023 seedlings are quite a bit larger. Hello Yello is three times larger! She will be a focus again this year. I think she is a tetraploid, as a tetraploid cross went to pod last year whereas a diploid cross didn’t. But that tetraploid cross pod started to fail, and then Bunimous Rex (our beloved neighborhood resident very large bunny) or a naughty squirrel got it. I know for sure it was not one of the white squirrels. Na-ah. They are very well behaved. Maybe this year some of the shorter crosses also need cloches lol. We shall see.

On the hosta scene, Blue Mouse Ears continue to amaze me. Last year’s divisions are popping up.

I think if I could only have one type of hosta, it would be Blue Mouse Ears. Yes, Rainforest Sunrise and Guacamole and Elegans and Praying Hands and Touch of Class. But goodness! Blue Mouse Ears year after year after year checks all the boxes – sun tolerant, disease free, drought hardy, and they reproduce very well. So well that they got divided and placed all over last fall. They are now coming up where we transplanted divisions – both here at the townhome, and at the historic cemetery.


The Asian lilies are also coming back.

Not terribly strong. They are quite old. But they are returning.
And … the clematis the lawn maintenance guy tried to pull last year? Back! Hahaha! I thought it was a goner, but nope. It’s back.

The daffodils I planted last fall are largely a no show. There are a few coming up at the historic cemetery, but most of the daffodils coming up there are the ones I planted in fall of 2023. And yes, I planted them correctly lol. It seems they did deter moles, as was my primary reason for planting them. They just didn’t bloom well. And that’s OK. The bags of 50 are coming to the end of an era. This fall I want to change things up a little and force grape hyacinth this coming winter. They also deter moles. And I can do smaller pots for forcing. If I want to.

And then there are the tulips. Of all the multiple (lots of) tulip bulbs in the townhome gardens that produce greens, only two have buds.

Yesterday after the greens of a few got stepped on while we cleaned the windows, I tested digging one out. I had kept my hand shovel out after digging and transplanting Blue Bells clematis volunteers.

I thought I might be able to dig the non-blooming tulips and consolidate them to one area (or bring them up north to naturalize or be deer food). Well, I probably should have gotten out the full-sized shovel. Instead of the bulb coming up, the stems broke off first. At which point I thought, “Why are you doing this? Pull the other stems and be done with it for another year.” I would like to say I did that immediately. I did for one more bulb. And then I remembered the next one I went to pull actually bloomed last year. They can fade back. Maybe next year I will feel differently.

To wrap up the afternoon yesterday, while I was in a cleanup mood, I tested to see if the variegated sedum (that it looked like we lost) was really a goner. It pulled out super easy, but wouldn’t you know it, there were little green sprouts. Dang! So, I searched around for a place where I could put it to give it one last chance. Aha! A swaparoo! A two-for. I moved the small Pink Tirza I want to use for crosses again this year to a more accessible spot,

and the variegated sedum went to a more secluded spot to R&R and hopefully come back stronger next year.

With that done, I called it quits. I was kind of still working off a crummy mood from something else. (What is it that makes normally sane drivers turn road risky on rummage sale days? Yikes!) I got myself a sweet tea and sat and looked at how nice the newly relocated Pink Tirza fit into its new home. That was a very good choice 🙂

And then, this morning on my walkabout I noticed … we did not lose the Guacamole hosta, as I feared. It is slowly coming up. The two Elegans, not looking good. Oh well. The circle of life.

Have a great weekend. I may take some time off early next week to put the finishing touches on something I will be kicking off next weekend – the Mahala Felton historical blog series. One post per week will be devoted to getting all the Mahala Felton research I have done out into the public domain. It has been a worthy endeavor, and I really want to share. The tie in is to the historic cemetery. More to come on that.

Yes, No, Maybe So

One of the things I am continually assessing for the gardens is what has worked and what I want to change.

A returning topic each spring is what to do with the tulip bulbs that produce greens every year, but by and large do not bloom. My husband has said dig them out and repurpose that space for daylilies I want to add. Very thoughtful. And I seriously considered it. I really wanted to add those daylilies. But the shrubs right there really expand just about the time the daylilies bud out. The daylilies would be hidden.

And I remember the year we put the tulip bulbs into the ground there. Our now DIL was newly dating our son. Within 15 min of meeting, we were garden talking. She is directly responsible for my daylily seed harvesting habit 🥰 I remember vividly when she said, “You know you can save those and grow new daylilies! Don’t let them go to waste!” I even have a daylily from seed that we rescued from being trampled on the ground in a seed pod at a local garden store. So many memories. And we planted so many tulips and daffodils and different hyacinth into the ground that fall. Admittedly most don’t bloom any more. That was years and years ago. They now have gardens of their own, and two very active little boys who love to help garden. Who love to play in the dirt like us haha!

So, what to do with those tulip bulbs. Ack! They can stay another year.

Early morning

May is here, and with it, hopefully, more patio time at the townhouse, and camping time up north.

The snow up north has returned to it’s liquid form, allowing tulips to start showing up.

Now, admittedly, those, like the tulips I recently planted at the historic cemetery, were forced bulbs from years past, and have never bloomed up north, that I know of. But just having the greens is an improvement from waist-high snow. It was a very long winter.

The past couple mornings, at the townhouse, I had an “opportunity” to go outside at 4am, courtesy of one terhuahua named Sandy. The moon was full and … the birds were singing. At 4:09 am.

Tulip planting time

It is tulip planting time. “What?”, you say. “Perhaps fall would be better?” you say. Yes, but these are bulbs from a watch’em grow vase our grandson, by way of Mom and Dad, gave me. They started to bloom before we went on our first ever planned “down south” vacation, and waited to wrap up blooming until a few days after we got back. Amazing! Maybe it was because we needed some cheering up during our covid bout.

Where should they be planted? Maybe up north. Maybe in the front of the townhouse. Or maybe at a new volunteer location, if approved of course. I will keep you posted 😁

Tulips

The runner-up to the first green of the season was a clump of tulips out front, the one below I am guessing they are the ones that do not bloom, but maybe they will surprise us. Later on Saturday I found another tulip shoot up, and a tiny daylily shoot.

Then on Easter Sunday morning I found the snow had melted enough to uncover yesterday’s pics. So they got first sharing. Those will probably also bloom, if sir bunimous does not get them first. I have, hopefully, a solution for that. Post upcoming.

The tulips out back

Most of our “tulips” here are actually just tulip greens. For some reason, tulips around here don’t have a lot of staying power for blooms. Yet every year, consistently, the tulip bulbs I have planted over the years are one of, if not the first, greens to emerge from the thawing ground.

There is, however, one stand of tulips that does bloom every year, and has for over 15 years. They are starting to come up again now, and I am hoping they will have their usual cheery purple blooms again this year. Time, as always, will tell.