The year to start some daylilies up north

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.

For now it is the shamrocks.

And maybe I can bring this poor orchid back to life.

Be Blessed!

What about Hello Yellow in 2026?

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 😉

Be Blessed!

The data doesn’t lie

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 shall see how it goes 😉

How do we get through this last month of winter?

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.

You see how this goes.

Yah. Winter here is long. Very long.

Grand Finale of South Seas self-seed blooms

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.

Enjoy!

Another South Seas self-seed bloom

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?

Kind of miss these, kind of not. Let’s stick with the South Seas self-seed blooms :)

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!

South Seas self-seed blooms Part 2

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!

South Seas Self-Seed Blooms

One of the things that has fascinated me is the results of our harvested South Seas daylily self-seed. Those are daylily blooms that result from harvesting seed that pollinators (not me ;)) create. It amazes me how beautiful they turn out, yet with no work from me but to harvest the seed, go through the planting sequence the next spring (stratification, to seedling, protect, plant in late summer), and wait. And sometimes wait and wait and wait lol

A large part of my garden plan, go forward, is to work with self-seed. The South Seas “family” will be the largest effort. South Seas itself had self-seed again in our 2025 garden. If it germinates and goes to seedling this year, we should have blooms by 2028 – 2032 lol. It is slow to bloom, but the results are sooooo worth it.

Here are three examples. I will share more over the weeks to come.

While we Wait

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.

Enjoy!