It’s the year

Looking the past few days at the space I have at the townhouse, what we can reasonably use at the historic cemetery, and all the seedlings, I decided I would buy a 3rd seedling box. It is on its way.

And my husband and I agreed – this is the critical mass year. This is the year daylilies need to start going up north.

Now, for newcomers, we have land up in far northern Minnesota USA. Along with black bears, bobcats, coyotes, wolves, foxes, of course deer, and a veritable plethora of small game – rabbits, grouse, some squirrels … oh, and a porcupine who seems to have moved on, thank goodness, and a woodchuck who was moved on. Plus a variety of very cool birds including owls. This earth mama, with all the tenderhearted earth and creature loving kindness just oozing out of me in our first year up there, tried a raised bed hugelculture set of gardens (money I sincerely regret spending). They were a wreck within months and such a loss by year two that we pulled them in year three and set the camper over the top of the beds when we built out our shed to cabin. And that was that. Except that I kept propagating daylilies here.

I am now solidly in year seven of this daylily propagation journey, and things are maturing to bloom all over the place. There is no more room after this year, and, truth be told, I now have 38 Molly Cowles seedlings in one seedling box, 14 Mahala Felton seedlings between two seedling boxes, and more coming up every day. We have reached our limit here, and we have perfectly good land for daylilies up north. So … I have picked out a spot on our land where we have good groundwater. I have been bringing my forced bulbs up north and planting them there for a few years. It’s just that when June comes and we are literally awash in in a sea of 4 foot tall ferns, my husband gets out the brush cutter and mows it all down there. Or we get awash in a sea of wood ticks as we walk around camp and to the outhouse. We have both gotten tick born illnesses. Not cool. So the brush cutter rules. Kind of like mouse poison rules after you spend a few sleepless nights listening to the mice skitch in the camper walls and run across your camper counter. Ugghhh.

What I need to do is get on my real world panties and get over my objection to landscape fabric, and lay a swath of it down up north and tack it to the ground and make holes for each daylily, and put a cloche over the top of each planting until we get it deer fenced, and let the leaves and pine straw and whatever wood chips and mulch I can harvest from sawing and splitting days cover the landscape fabric … and see what happens. Yep. Right here.

That’s it. Hard stop. Or I can stop propagating daylilies – and “that ain’t happenin’”. 😂

Donuts, Bouquets, and lots of daylily seedlings scaping all over the garden!

For the past few weeks the Asian lilies have been blooming, the remaining hostas have been scaping out, and every day I have seen more daylily scapes. The spots where we lost all the hostas have been reassigned to match our new phase of gardening here, clover has increasingly been removed, and bunny deterrents are in place.

Did you know that forget-me-nots don’t even need to bloom to deter bunnies? It is the leaves that emit a scent that the bunnies don’t like. So I am plucking away on blooms as the stems start to fall over. The flowers are pretty, and make nice little bouquets with the daylilies, but the leaves are what deter snacking bunnies.

That being said, I am also judiciously pulling the forget-me-nots where I want paths to legacy daylilies I want to use for crosses. Lots of transition in place, and the forget-me-nots are at the very top of that list. They will definitely stay, just more strategically placed.

Another fun fact – Did you know that gardens also bake donuts? Yes indeedio! Here is proof.

I have a number of layering (bouquets) in the garden, and I am embracing them more and more as I move into this next phase of the townhome gardens. Maybe the donut will get some friends. We shall see.

On the daylily scene, all daylily seeds harvested here in 2024 are now planted, and the seedling boxes are full, protecting them from the squirrels. I also still have a tray of planted seeds inside. I could make room in the current seedling boxes, but I want to give the Mahala seeds that haven’t germinated just a little more time. You never know.

Sadly, a few of our legacy daylilies don’t seem to be scaping out this year. That means it is division time for them this fall. More shifting. More adjusting to this next phase. And as the garden ages out on legacy plants and adds more daylily seedlings, eventually there will be a whole new look. Free as far as buying plants. And neat to see what is created. Kinda fun.

Forget-me-Nots

We are in the middle of rain, rain, rain here for the past week or so and now we are heading into almost another whole week of rain lol. But Saturday I got a bunch of work done on the garden. That felt great!

Recently I shared that we lost a bunch of hostas. Those losses have spurred on change. Those losses made me rethink a lot about our garden set up. We lost those hostas because of of a number of reasons – fertilizer and herbicide overspray and then a few of them were expected because I knew tree roots were getting quite close. And because those reasons will not be going away, I am not replacing any of what was lost.

But that was not the end of the story. The space did not look “right”, and because there had been so many hostas there, other things that were previously minor parts of the garden – the forget-me-nots and the clover – began to flourish. Think no barriers like plastic underlayment under the rock …

Saturday I spent time paring back the forget-me-nots and the clover (and quite a few bunny planted raspberry seedlings) in prep for where I want to go with my next garden phase – expanding my daylily propagation work, needing more planter space. Just like anything, times are changing. I am in a new phase of my gardening, just like we all get to new phases of our life, and I need to have a little bit of reassessment of what will work for this.

Saturday I cleared all clover and forget-me-nots out of the front, left very little of it in the corner where the linden is, and cleared it away from the path out back.

I was unsure of what I wanted to do in the area that sustained the largest number of hosta losses, so I left just a little patch of clover and forget-me-nots there. This morning I decided. I moved the green shamrock into that area, and I like it, so the remaining clover and forget-me-not patch in that round of the corner will go.

And then I will tackle this.

I planted the forget-me-nots the year my father-in-law and a sweet neighbor friend passed weeks apart. The forget-me-nots are sentimental. And I have kept them inside the paver trim. Inside 😊 But I hardly think that stepping on forget-me-nots is a great way to remember those we have lost, and stepping on forget-me-not is definitely not part of my daylily propagation “vision ”, so, as they bloom and begin to fade, they will be pared way back. A heartwarming sprinklng that enhances the daylilies and remaining hostas out back.

Fill in Friday -Bunnyville

With the loss of so many hostas and the daylily, the area that was most affected looks pretty open. I will not replace those plants, and potted plants are not a good option with the bunnies and squirrels and some of the birds. But nature is kind of taking care of things.

I see that where the hostas used to be there is clover growing (plus some forget-me-nots). And I realize the new empty space is perhaps destined to become named “Bunnyville”. Where the bunnies occasionally munch on the sedum, there are three raspberry plants growing – that I for sure did not plant there. I think we can figure what happened lol.

I am tempted to let them grow, but I probably won’t.