Monday, August 29, 2011

Not the Old Daylily

                                                               A lily a day is a Daylily

Reblooming Day lily

As I have watched my garden bloom this summer, I have seen some flowers thrive and some die.  To me it is sad to see a flower unhappy.  You can not always go by the label sun, shade or sun to part shade. If you have neighbors that have flowers, you can ask them if they have good luck with a certain plant.  The planting zone does not always help either.  We have had the hottest summer in resent history, in lower Arkansas, zone nine.  We watered every four days, if we have no rain, and we have had very little rain.  The roses need lots of water and care.  We plant the most hardy, but the sun was so hot it drew all the moisture out and the roses just dried up.  There are a few flowers that made it fine.  The day lily was among the best.  There is but one draw back, they have a short blooming time.   Unless you buy the rebloomers.  I thought I had several rebloomers,  however now I don't think so.  I have one that is still blooming.  I planted one of these day lilies in 2008, divided them in 2010 and I had eleven.  You need to divide  your day lilies every three years.  I planted most of mine in 2008 and I am dividing them this year. When we think about day lilies, we think they are fairly new and only yellow and orange.  Daylilies have been around since before the written word.  Like a lot of other flowers, I have found in my research for writing my blogs, daylilies came from China.  The Chinese ate the blooms and used the roots for medicine.  The daylily was brought to Asia Minor in 70 AD from China,so you can see the daylily is certainly not new.  In 1752 Swedish naturalist, Linnaeus, published his "Species Planetarium".  However the daylily did not become well known in the US until the 1950s.  When I was a little my mother never had any, had they been well established  here my Mother would have had them.   Only in the past few years through hybridization have we been able to have more than the three colors.  I have found a wonderful place on Internet to buy reblooming daylilies.  Smokey's Daylily Gardens, has a wonder selection, if you spend 50.00 or more you will have free postage, I felt like I got two free.  I ordered ten and they sent me ten free.  I like deals like that, gardening can be expensive, I spend any where from 100.00 to 400.00 dollars a year.  I planted ten today. My daylilies started blooming in May, and one is still blooming.  Hope you will continue to watch my garden grow and will grow one of your own.  Happy gardening to you from me Juanita 

Stella De Ore





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I bought this one from a farm outside of Dermott, Ar.

Picot edge

May 19- Aug 29 and still blooming

If you have not tried the new shorter daylily, I hope you will.  I plant them in front of my Roses.

1 comment:

  1. That is a good idea to plant the daylilies infront of the roses.

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