See which ones you think are South Seas kids that bloomed today.
I hope you didn’t say the Bluebells clematis that is reblooming 😉
South Seas is the 5th picture. The 6th and 7th are her kids, thanks to our pollinators, and my harvesting, storing, doing stratification, planting for germination, and then replanting into their various maturing places. I am starting to love self seed, and honestly, self seed will happen a lot up north because we have a lot a lot a lot of pollinators. A lot lol.
The first pic is peach daylily, with a pollinator friend who I hope didn’t already make a cross because I am hoping to successfully type and then cross Peachy this year.
The second is Just Plum Happy, and those are my husband’s favorites. We have several. That one is the middle child. Just Plum Happy doesn’t like to play with others much. We have learned to let her relax and just be her wonderful authentic self. She has produced self seed offspring, but not with my help. Direct sow does work. Maybe it was me tossing it, maybe it was squirrels or bunnies or the wind or just gravity. Just Plum Happy will definitely have real estate up north. Probably not by seedling, but by division.
The third pic is red daylily. Red daylily and Pink Tirza like to make a lot of seed. Red daylily sometimes does this adorable thing where she curls her petals at the very end. Sometimes more as the day goes on. We shall see what she does today. I hope the kids get those curly petals. Hopefully not 4 years from now, but we shall see.
And then the fourth pic is Bluebells clematis reblooming.
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’”. 😂
I am sitting in the garden, watching a robin on the bird bath, listening to the mourning doves, feeling exceptionally blessed.
I know I have a full day ahead, but I have had my scripture time, I have had my morning garden walk time, my coffee is gone and I am switching to water.
This is (tentatively) Simple Perfection. She represents 6 years of patience, and she almost went up north to be deer food last fall. Glad I didn’t do that!
She is my first ever harvested daylily seed, and I did a direct sow, the only direct sow I have done. She spent 3 years in the old seedling bed, and then I moved her into her current location. She is also a self seed, from South Seas, which also produced Equal Opportunity, but in a different year. And as an aside, younger South Seas self seed are also maturing in the garden, from yet more years. I am liking what I am seeing from South Seas self seed!
South Seas has yet to produce a successful intentional cross. She may be saying I need to leave her alone !
I want to try one more South Seas pollen cross, to peach daylily, and one more cross from Pink Tirza pollen (which I expect to fail, because Pink Tirza is supposed to be a diploid). If those both fail, South Seas will retire as the most prolific self seeder in our garden, with many different children.
Here is a family pic, Simple Perfection in the front, South Seas in the back.
Peach daylily is one of our oldest daylilies. Around 20 years. I bought two colors at the local big box store – pink and purple. Pink became peach and purple disappeared. I gave two peach clumps to my mother-in-law and one stayed here, all these years. Originally she was in the sun, but then as we went to a pellet grill she ended up way more in the shade. She began to bloom less and less until she stopped blooming altogether. Very sad. Two falls ago I transplanted her back into the sun. Last year she built up her foliage. This year she is back.
This morning it is raining and I almost missed her first return bloom.
Equal Opportunity will be this daylily’s name. It is a South Seas self seed and I think it is from 2020 seed. (I was way less concerned about documentation back then.) Equal Opportunity has everything on it’s debut – pleats, ribs, ruffles, smooth petals, “seersucker” type petals, along with many patterns. She’s kind of trying it all out. Equal Opportunity will, no doubt, work all of that out over the successive blooms and the year. We saw that with Hello Yellow too, and year 2 she is much more consistent. Oh goodness, she has it going on! It’s almost like she’s got some Pink Tirzah in her genetics. (I think she does shhhh)
About this time of year I start to make my fall list of garden changes/updates/refreshes. It can get to be quite ambitious in my mind, so getting it in black and white is important. To set healthy limits, I have a moratorium on in-ground to in-ground transplanting from late June to the beginning of September. That timeline gives me time to focus on the daylilies during bloom, and it helps give me a chance to fully assess the gardens’ future needs. It also keeps me remembering that the September heat adds to the transplanting effort and curbs my “enthusiasm”, which in turn keeps the list manageable. So the list has begun. #1 at the townhouse is dividing and transplanting more of the Blue Mouse Ears hostas. This one is already part of a long-term change for the gardens. Those Blue Mouse Ears started fairy ringing a few years ago. I divided and transplanted a few clumps last year and they are doing well, even scaping out and blooming.
The divisions this year will follow last year’s pattern, moving them more into the shade. I want to reestablish a path to the back of the garden again, so the hostas I divide will move into that area, giving more layering, which also keeps weeds down, and then the space where the Blue Mouse Ears hostas will come out of will become a footpath again.
The forget-me-nots are winding down their bloom and getting pulled out. They are biennials so as I pull more and more, only leaving them for a bunny deterrent, they will stay – but in significant moderation. I do miss them a bit, but you can imagine what I don’t miss. I don’t miss how the tall stems cling to anything fabric. So the decision is – they are awesome bunny repellent but they are not going to be taller parts of “bouquets” going forward. They can stay low. A sweet sentimental part of our garden.
The peach asian lilies are done blooming, and they have now been cut back to half height. All except one I missed. I do like that they not only look tidier but that cutting them back preserves their energy from going to seed. Oh, believe me, I am tempted to let the one I missed go to seed, but I researched to remind myself on why I don’t grow Asian lilies from seed, and to get success with bringing harvested Asian lily seed to bloom it takes a series of stratification steps, followed by 3-7 years as a seedling, before bloom. I think I may say no to that wonderful opportunity this year at least. Probably longer.
Speaking of years, 7 years in to my daylily propagation journey, I am now growing enough daylily seedlings, to bloom, to keep me (and the historic cemetery) more than good. This year we have three new daylily seedlings with scapes, and the 2024 seeds are popping up more for the future. The cloches are on the seedlings, and the Mahala Felton seeds that don’t germinate this week are going into the shamrocks with their dirt. They still will have a chance, just not a dedicated space.
And the shamrocks? I don’t know what is going on there. Birds or bunnies or squirrels or something are starting to dig at those pots again, so I am going to do an experiment. I am going to put them in the ground in a spot where we lost a hosta. That spot is already growing some shamrocks from bird, bunny, or squirrel damage I missed collecting earlier this spring. We had a friend who somehow managed to grow them perennially, outdoors, in the ground, here in Minnesota, even though they are not supposed to be winter hardy. At this point they are getting distroyed anyway, and I have plenty saved in the house, so no big. It will be an adventure. Could be I grow them as annuals in our garden forward. Or we could have a new perennial. We shall see.
Finally, I have a seedling from the early years when I was doing uneducated crosses that is baffling me. I have looked and looked at pics and notes, and it sure looks like I successfully crossed Pink Tirza with a tetraploid. That’s what the envelope said (my handwriting) when I planted it. That should not have worked, as Pink Tirza is supposed to be a diploid. Very odd. Maybe something got crossed before I did the cross. We shall see how that matures.
Other than that, Red Volunteer bloomed its first bloom since I planted it last year at the historic cemetery, and I missed it. Hey, that’s how it goes. It has another bud that looks like it might bloom soon – maybe the 4th of July 😊
And finally, July 2nd was the 162nd anniversary of Gettysburg where one of the historic cemetery’s residents, James Akers, was killed in action.
This year I finished up adding purple irises to both sides of the fence garden. I am hoping they bloom for Memorial Day next year.
Wishing you a wonderful 4th of July if you are in the United States, and a beautiful week ahead.
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.
Susan's Daily Garden 