It took “a bit” today

It took a bit today to finally get this blog decided on. There was “Envelope, Please” where I started to share about harvesting the daylily seeds, what was looking good for next year’s potential. There was “Very little left to do in the townhome gardens” where I had started to share the pre-fall progression for the gardens over the past couple weeks. There was “A snapshot of this ‘n that” where I had some pretty things in the gardens to share. All of those were started in the past few weeks and then left to sit. Our aging dog with a heart condition took a few continual turns for the worse, a family member got a very tough medical diagnosis, and the US and world news is … horrifying. Maybe things like this continually happen and we just don’t get a view to it. But it has all been heartbreaking. Praying about it continually, and then doing positive things has been the only way. Our dog is now on medicine designed purely to make his life as comfortable as possible. Our family member is undergoing extensive treatment. And the world, and us in the world, continually mourns losses, but most certainly with the hope of peace for eternity.

And we are still in this world, so we have work to do. And work we will do. Sharing beauty with the gifts we have been given. And experience. And wisdom. And sometimes, as other bloggers have reminded me today, just good old belly laughs. In proper time and measure.

So, for today, I will share a lot of thanks and praise. And some experience, and, hopefully, wisdom.

At the townhouse:

The daylily seed harvest is plentiful. Hundreds of seeds. Some self-seed, but even more through intentional crosses. I have no idea what I will do if even half of it germinates. But I’m guessing I will figure it out.
I have finished all my transplanting, and I am truly truly truly out of room. Some stuff will have to go elsewhere with next year’s divisions. I keep thinking up north but maybe something else will come to mind. We shall see.
The townhome gardens are winding down. The sedum is in full bloom. The late blooming hostas look awesome, and soon I will start cutting the daylilies back (but that will definitely be a different blog post :))

At the historic cemetery:

The self-seed I harvested in the “Shirley” and the “Mahala” gardens – 78 Stella de Oro seeds plus the 2 Red Volunteer seeds – if they germinate in spring, will need a home over there. Possibly at the Fischer site.
The Fischer site test garden is started and, so far, is doing well.
Yes, we have lost Mahala daylily seedlings in the “Mahala” garden. Yes, I am sad about that. Yes, I knew it could happen. No, I will not replace them. What did Grandma say? “Ve get too soon oldt and too late schmart.” Which leads me to –
The historic cemetery gardens are ending their third year in their renovated state and I could not be (much) more pleased. Yes, I wish the Mahala daylily seedling situation was a bit better. Yes, there have been some other challenges. But I have learned soooooooooo much about things that are unique to public site gardens. WAY more joy than “ugghhh”. AND – those gardens are now fully in maintenance mode. Self-sustaining for stock through division of existing plants and seed harvesting propagation from the site itself, and only doing self-seed, no intentional crosses there. It is fully self-sustainable with one exception –
It will need mulch topper each spring, but that should be the only spend 🙂
This is a HUGE milestone. I am very excited about that – the joint accomplishment and the ability to confidently call that decision.
And now we can do extras, like the Fischer site, as the ideas and resources present themselves. We truly do have an awesome team vibe established for those types of things 🙂

So today I am not going to endlessly sit in front of our tv watching horrifying things, dotted with advertisements for things I do not need nor want. I am not going to worry about things I cannot do anything more about. I can choose to use that time for more beautiful things, and still know enough to know how to pray, and for what. And that is what I shall do.

Wishing you peace ahead.

Oh There You Are!

Notice anything funny about this picture?

Yep, that outline is where one of the new MDP seedling boxes was until this morning. The seedlings are ALL planted, including the Mahala Felton daylily seedlings, which are now planted at the historic cemetery. And replanted, due to a wee bit of suspected quadruped activity. We think. One never knows for sure 😉

With all the seedlings planted, all that is left in the seedling boxes is the dirt pots with seed that did not germinate. I won’t call those a bust until the end of September.

Sooooo – why did I move the seedling box? Because … a girl can change her mind … The South Seas self-seed seedlings did so well this year, and there are so many more that are at the 1-3 year stage, that I … decided they get their own wave. A nod to the red wave out front and a form of continuance. And to do that, I needed to move the seedling box. Doing that is a bit of a trust factor. Hopefully they will be fine along the border re: grass fertilizing … but I am going to do that test because the upside could be worth it.

You may also wonder where the wood seedling box went. That is a very sad report. After four years of sitting on concrete at least six months of the year, it is in need of repairs.

It will get fixed up and painted “up north green” to hopefully stall the rot a bit, and then it will live up north. Probably sans its rotting floor, and perhaps a great protection from Mr. and Mrs. Deer, as it has the framed screen cover. I would add Mr. and Mrs. Rabbit, but I think our resident Bard owls have made many a meal of them and their friends. The circle of life.

Been Kind of Spoiled

All the 2025 crosses are now recorded in the excel spreadsheet, and I am starting to wrap that up for the record. I thought about doing a cool graphic, but that will need to wait until much later. There are garden areas to plant with seedlings.

Yesterday morning I took a fair amount of time to enjoy the day’s blooms. I was tempted to do just a few more crosses, but I stuck with the plan. Eventually I started to make decisions on locations for the remaining 2025 seedlings, and then began day 1 of the tucking in. They will not bloom for at least 2 more years while they establish, and by then I will be dividing their neighbors. The first decision was easy – the second (and final) set of 3 Mahala seedlings that will live in our garden went in today. The rest of the Mahala seedlings will go to the historic cemetery in September.
Next week half of the Molly Cowles seedlings will go into their 3 year space. And then the Coral Majority self-seed seedlings, and on it will go. Some seedlings will go up north. Definitely half of the Molly Cowles seedlings. My DIL is giving me landscaping fabric, we have boatloads of boulders to secure it, and we are a go. More on that this fall.

The past six weeks have been so full of daylily color that I got kind of spoiled. Daylily season is like having fresh flowers delivered every single day, and not having to deal with changing the water in vases lol Up front the ninebarks are putting on quite the show, but out back there is increasingly a sea of green staring back at me. I want to solve for that. Short term I think I will bring more purple shamrocks out, but as I am tucking seedlings in, I am planning (hopefully) for more late season soothing color from the crosses in the next few years. I could also propagate more Autumn Joy sedum and plant them around the bend in the path (the bees love them). We shall see.

The beauty of self-seed daylilies

It is the time of year where I get to start relaxing my mind and start just following the palette of daylily crosses I have put together for the year, crosses put together depending on how and when each daylily bloomed. Yes, it is still a lot of work, but the template has been made, and now I get to spend more time really, deeply enjoying the second half of our daylily season.

Last Friday was our apex. The daylilies were blooming like crazy for days, and there were also spent blooms in various stages, still on the scapes, making pods. It is not my favorite “look”, but it is my craft. I let them do their best work, even if it means blooms that follow get a little compromised. It is actually my cue that the garden is about ready to move into the second half of the season. It is also a very good reminder to me that I am not the only one working on the garden. And nowhere is that more evident than in the self-seed blooms. They are all over the garden, too.

Side note – I need a spreadsheet to keep track of which daylilies are pollen producers only, pods only, and especially when I do a “one up” cross, either as a test or because I could not resist. And remember, not everything that worked last year is working this year, for both pollen and pod, and then there is rain and sprinkler patterns and location and age. It is … a lot. A lot that my very busy mind really enjoys. But there is even a point at which I say enough. This year it was the apex.

So back to self-seed. I cannot resist harvesting self-seed. This year we had quite a few South Seas self-seed seedlings go to bloom for the first time. I started this daylily propagation journey by harvesting self-seed, and South Seas is really good at self-seeding. (It could also be because I use South Seas pollen a lot, and that may cause self-seeding.)

All of the South Seas seedlings for all of the years up to 2023 seed harvest/2024 seedling, bloomed this year. And although I separated the years into separate plantings, I stored all of the South Seas self-seed harvest together, and the next year when they went to seedling, I planted them together, as a group, by year.

I am starting to see very different “looks” in the different yearly planting groups. The most dramatic has come through Equal Opportunity. Below are two scapes, and two different looks.

I love them both.

After seeing this year’s blooms, I get the feeling there is definitely a message go-forward. First, “Please don’t stop harvesting self seed!” (I won’t) and maybe even, “When harvesting self-seed – save, store, and plant each self-seed pod separately” (yet to be determined).

More research to come …

It’s A Puzzle

The other morning as our dog woke me to go outside at 4 am, and I realized the birds were not starting to sing yet, I was reminded we are into mid July. We are on the waning side of the summer solstice. Even though the days are hotter, the amount of sunshine each day is decreasing now. Kind of bummer-ish. And truth be told, were it not for daylily time, I would be tempted to be indoors way more in July. I do not naturally love the heat and humidity we get in July. But I love the gardens, and the daylilies make July sing, so outside I am.

There is so much “garden” going on that I didn’t get my blog from Friday finished, and didn’t do anything blog related on Saturday.
Here is a download:

A few of the Molly Cowles crosses that were so easy and successful last year have failed so far this year. I decided to flip the cross, and see what happens. So far so good. But honestly, if that cross isn’t a go this year, I’m good. I have 38 seedlings going from that cross. I can rest on that one.

Hello Yellow is done blooming for a while. And she has two self seed pods going. I am so excited about that! I am still working on figuring out her parentage. I so regret my sloppy note taking early on. I still think my note that she is a cross with Pink Tirzah as one parent could be accurate, but I need to prove that out. Pink Tirzah is still a puzzle to me. Last year she behaved like a diploid, but this year her diploid crosses are failing, so far.

We have another puzzle, too, but this one is easy, I think.
To set the stage, I have been reading up on daylily propagation, and one consistent recommendation is “FOCUS, FOCUS, FOCUS”, meaning choose a couple daylilies to cross, and then focus within that parentage to work on the desired characteristics. Sage advice. The reason I needed a third seedling box this year is because of all the “one ups” I did last year. A lot of them produced questionable seed and are not going to seedling yet. Arrggghhhh. So for me, I definitely think South Seas is one of my focus lines. The Mahala Felton daylily seedling cross is in the South Seas line. A lot of my self seed seedlings, and now blooming daylilies, are from South Seas. I even have Coral Majority self seed seedlings cominh up. South Seas is one of Coral Majority’s parents. (Not my cross, I bought Coral Majority.) But with 5 new South Seas self seed seedlings blooming for the first time this year, and successful crosses in that line, am hearing the message that South Seas is my “FOCUS, FOCUS, FOCUS”. I even have a Lullaby Baby I bought last year, a diploid, that is budding out this year, that is, guess what? In South Seas parentage. A diploid, in a tetraploid’s parentage. Apparently, it can happen.

On to the puzzle – I have had 5 South Seas self seed seedlings go to flower in the past couple weeks, and they all look different. They are from different years. But what I thought was solely the 6 year South Seas seedling has 3 very distinctly different blooms, a different look and even height per scape, and I know that the 6 year seedling was one seed. It should be the same genetics. So …. I am guessing the other two, different fans, are from bunny and squirrel assists. Direct sow, so to speak. Different genetics. South Seas almost always has some seed spillage each year where I find there has been critter activity. I think the seed spilled around the 6 year seedling and made the different versions. Something to be aware of, as I had a similar scenario with Just Plum happy last year, but OK with me. I absolutely love all the self seeds that have bloomed from South Seas. So much that I have decided not to cross any pollen TO South Seas, at least this year, to make any seed that comes from South Seas be noted as self seed. Keep my like easy. But I will use South Seas pollen. I already have a successful cross this season to peach daylily with South Seas pollen (one pod, and it looks like others on the way). That will be fun if the seed is viable. And hopefully others like Lullaby Baby will work as well.

I am thinking Pink Tirza is going to be my other focus line, but first I have to figure out how she is going to behave in the garden. ie. Did she really cross with a tetraploid in my garden, and if so, are there others that would work? Hint: I already tried South Seas. No dice. But she did make the start of a pod from Hello Yellow pollen (until I accidentally pulled it), and I typed Hello Yellow out last year as a tetraploid. Yah. It’s a puzzle.

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’”. 😂