My mind wants to go to the historic cemetery garden and while away a couple hours trimming and weeding and dreaming about next steps, but the hot humid weather reminds me to be careful. Maybe an early morning this weekend. In the meantime, unknown big ruffled yellow daylily bloomed again today. Doggone if I can figure out what it is. It might have been a freebie with order, that was mismarked? It sat there not blooming for 3 seasons and now that it is showing off I cannot find a saved tag that matches up. Those crazy busy unorganized years are biting me now. But she sure is beautiful!
And two more Purple D’Oro blooms today.
I should do some crosses but I just haven’t decided on which ones this year.
And in the meantime I should also remove the old blooms, but I just cannot force myself to do that either. The bees are having so much fun! What will they accomplish? And at the same time though, wherever will I continue to put seedlings from harvested seeds from their work? I am so out of space. As if on cue, Bunny helped with one, bit it right off, its fair share for us enjoying its shenanigans.
The unplanned seedling from Marque Moon is getting a yellow bud. An Enchanted April coloration would be so bonus!
The first daylily to bloom this year was a Tirzah. Always beautiful!
The second to bloom is new
I need to research this one. I don’t think it is Delicate Design, as I was expecting. It is a huge bloom, very sturdy, and not the same markings as I see online for Delicate Design. But it is gorgeous, and it will stay.
Albeit fun, and a great challenge, it has been a multi-year process to get the first daylily seedling to produce scapes in our townhome gardens. And even so, it is pollinator created, from Marque Moon, not an intentional cross. But I am very C C pleased. It is progress. And I have learned a bunch that should help get our intentional crosses from 2023 on better footing than their predecessors.
Here was my happy discovery today
I am expecting blooms that look like Enchanted April or Admiral’s Braid, the parentage, but we shall see.
I have taken a bit of a meandering path to get to today’s happy discovery. Here is a bit of history and my personal experience so far:
Planting direct sow, into the ground, is a slow boat. My first daylily seedling attempt was doing that with pollinator created seeds from our South Seas daylily 5 years ago. Those seeds were viable, but produced a very slow growing daylily clump. Less than 6 hours/day of sun exposure probably also had a small impact. I moved it into more sun last fall and it now looks more robust, but still no scapes.
Planting daylily seedlings in a raised bed, in a sunny location, without watering beyond rain, even if it is hugelculture, does not work. Also not protecting from deer does not work. I did that combo 4 years ago. None survived. I wish I had that money back! Those frames are now disassembled and what was remaining of the hugelculture decomposing has been smoothed out.
Planting daylily seedlings in a sunny, perpetually somewhat moist area probably did work, but we sold that little house so I cannot say for certain. It looked successful when we were there.
Planting daylily seedlings into a well watered garden with less than 6 hours of sun produced slow growing seedlings that are now only turning around because they were transplanted into more sun this spring.
Transplanting daylily seedlings into a well watered and well drained very sunny location produced very robust 2nd year plants this season so far. One of those is the daylily with scapes, year 2.
Trying intentional crosses without planning and looking up ploidy doesn’t work. Nuf said there.
I stratify in Feb/March, and then after Easter, I plant the same type/species/crosses seeds together in a pot, indoors, covered with plastic. Yah, I know, unconventional. I have tried all the conventional methods without success. Can you say gross, mold, dead seeds? In May I usually put the pots out in the outdoor seedling box, covered loosely in plastic, with the screened cover over top. I have been fooled, and put them out too early (think late snow), but the seeds and seedlings seem to be smart. They just take their good sweet time, and commence growing when it is consistently warmer again.
I do need to get back to being much more diligent with my labeling and record keeping (diagrams). For labeling, I was careless this year and tucked the empty envelopes with the seed info into the seedling box. The ones written in pencil washed off in the rain. That I do regret. I also need to keep diagrams of where I plant in the garden. My record keeping workaround is going to be a printed out photo with labeling. My planting is in clumps, so that should be a satisfactorily resurrected method from my past to re-employ 😊
Hopefully more of the seedlings will produce scapes this year.
It is a rainy, chill out sort of 4th of July (American Independence Day) here. Here’s some red, white, and “blue” from our garden.
And a hint of which daylily looks like it is right on the verge of being the first to bloom in the garden this year. It will also be the first time it has bloomed in our garden. Full disclosure, I did not mark it, so until it blooms I will not be able to say for sure, but I believe it is Delicate Design.
We are having an exceptionally rainy Spring this year, which, alternating with some recent heat spells is causing us to play hopscotch with our time in the gardens. Think mosquitos also added to rain and heat impediments. Short bursts of catch-it-while-you-can time has been the norm. But the Asian lilies are keeping it pretty, whether inside or out.
A fantastic 24 hours indeed! Tuesday I had volunteer time through work to start using up, so I scheduled 2 hours at the start of the day. Hey, calendars determine part of these decisions 😉 Tuesday was predicted sunny a few days before, but it dawned with rain. By 7:30 am it was to a drizzle and I could not stand the wait any longer. I needed my historic cemetery fence gardening fix. Off I went. And as blessings would have it, the drizzle fizzled by the time I pulled up to the cemetery, and stopped within a minute of getting out of the car and starting to work. This was the first project of the day I wanted to complete – a removable border to keep the mulch in on the new iris bed.
It has to be removable come late fall because the snow plow/blower will suck up even pavers set on end. Now maybe the perfectionist in some will say, “Why not right on the edge?” Well, at first I had the mulch mounded, and it was going over the top of the border if I placed it right at the edge. But as projects go, I just had to see if I could make it work right on the edge. I smoothed out the mulch, repositioned the border, and called my friend the site manager, who said “Hello crazy lady!” Hahaha! I asked her if she and her husband were coming over because pics weren’t sending and I needed a second set of eyes. You know what she said? “No, because it’s raining.” Now, first of all, in case you think that was not nice, she is my friend, so she was just having fun, but I tell you, the drive is short from our part of town, and it was not even drizzling at the cemetery when I called her. So I was being blessed for sure!!! Here is the pic I was trying to send her.
I made the decision, I liked the border farther back for now. Maybe I will plant ground cover in front. You just never know what I might do in a garden when I set my mind a-going. I might plant more irises in that bed and move the border forward yet this year even. You just never know with me 🙂
So I got done with the border, poured in my last bag of mulch to chock-a-block full top it off, micro-weeded the right side of the garden, took a few more quick pics, and went back home, to my office, and logged in, 7 minutes late. No worries. It was all good. Work knows what a crazy lady I am too, and that they will see me work way more than 7 minutes late cuz, well, you know, I am one of those weird people that like what I do for a paycheck. We are out there, right? 😉
At the end of my work day the dog got extra lovins because I was going to leave him yet again, but only for an hour or so, to go to the historical society meeting at a historic factory turned hotel, condos, pub, and event venue. So fun!!!
Here are pics of the setting. It was an absolutely beautiful night! No rain there!
Still, I couldn’t stop there. I had spotted the first daylily of my gardening season in bloom at the cemetery in the morning. But my phone was in the glove box, all the way at the other end of the fence garden, and you know, I was running late dadeedadeeda …
So I had to, I just had to, get a pic of that first daylily blooming. Yes, it is the overused Stella D’Oro, but … it is the first daylily of the year in the gardens I love and work in.
I returned home a very happy crazy lady! And our dog celebrated with the zoomies.
This morning, I was treated to a fully opened peach Asian lily and the first opened hosta blooms.
I tell ya, it was a wunderbar 24 hours!
And I think the baby bunny must have had fun too.
Dang it! Now I have to start using that cordial glass again!
The weigelia and the first blooming ninebark are wrapping up, and that has left the forget-me-nots and the first (almost) blooming hosta to carry the show.
Last year was my second year of trying intentional crosses to create new daylilies. This is something just for fun for me, and an opportunity to learn more and try out new challenges. I am not doing it to create anything certified. Nothing fancy. I put all the “same cross” into one pot. This is, as the old saying goes, “for kicks and giggles”.
The crosses between Marque Moon and China Doll were definitely the most successful last year. Of 38 seeds, we have eleven seedlings. We also have other seedlings – of the pencil mishap variety. I labeled some batches in pencil and it got washed away. On those I can guesstimate, but I cannot say for absolute certain what they are. Although a bummer, I’m still happy those worked, and if/when they bloom I will have fun guesstimating what they were.
And then there are the squirrel mishaps – where they seedlings were outside the box and the squirrels dug in the dirt. Those were a loss. Those very naughty squirrels!
Learning as we go here. This year I will do only two or three types of intentional crosses so that everything fits in the planter, protected by the screen.
Susan's Daily Garden 