Down at the Daylily Farm

Seriously, if you asked me even 5 years ago if there was such a thing as a daylily farm, I would have laughed out loud at you.  A daylily farm?  You've got to be kidding me.

But there is such a thing.  And what's more - I actually went there.

It's over in Connecticut, down by the Housatonic River, nestled in between the mountains.  You take the highway, to the state route, to the county route, to a street, to a road, to a dirt road with little hand-painted signs that tell you to make sure you stay on the road because there's a nasty 4-foot drop on either side that would split your car in 2 should you choose to pull over.  That was a joy to drive down in my big pickup truck - I thought I would have a stroke!

But once you get there, oh so pretty.  The road opens up and you realize that you're in the valley - and the only thing there is the daylily farm.

They have the most adorable little shop.  Natural cedar building with a wood stove.  Inside it was painted a creamy white and hand-oiled wood accents for the shelves.  Potatoes, squashes and garlic were mounded in hand-made baskets.  Watercolors of the dayliles graced the walls.  (Yes, I said "graced" - because they were so delicate and gentle in their art.)

None of the daylilies are in bloom now, but can you imagine this filled with flowers?  I could.

We ordered the fans (that's how they come - in fans) a few weeks ago, so they were all dug up and boxed, ready to be picked up.  These ones are for the Garden Club to give away, unfortunately, not for my gardens.  So I chatted a bit with the farmer (daylily farmer - heh heh heh!) and thanked him for getting up with the sun so I could pick up the fans.

Then I made my way back down that dirt road at a whopping 3 m.p.h. and headed home.  Snails crawl faster.

Tour 2

Today was the 2nd garden tour of the season.  This one is specifically to feature our daylilies.  In a way it's a harder tour than the 1st one which featured the entire gardens, because these people know their hemerocallis!

When we prepared for this tour, we ignored the weeds and "fluffy" hedges.  We focused solely on the daylilies themselves.

Each individual plant was deadheaded and trimmed neatly.  Any yellowed leaves were inspected for bugs and disease - their yearly plant "physical".

I gave a sincere talk to each one of the flowers, encouraging them to bloom brightly and look really happy.  I think it worked.

Since the season is running about 7 days ahead of schedule this year, our visitors were able to see some of the later blooming daylilies that normally aren't out during the tours.

And since most of my daylilies are historic plants, which most people don't collect in this area, they were able to see blossoms that they had never seen before in person.

And, of course, this particular daylily is only in our garden (and 2 of our friends - it was their wedding gift).  This is the one that my DH and I registered.  That makes it pretty special.

Since we plant several new cultivars of daylily each year, some of them are blooming for us for the first time this year.  It's always exciting to see them popping up in the gardens - adding their splash of color to the rest of the blooms.

Some of the colors are quite vibrant - they look as they are swallowing the sunshine.

We had some wonderful folks stop by to view the gardens and had some serious talks about our hemerocallis collection.  (Yes, some people take this quite seriously!)  But we also had a lot of fun meeting people that we only email during the course of the year.

My DH and I love our garden tours - and there were hundreds of flowers putting on a great show today - but I'm glad we're done with them for the season.  They are a lot of work, preparing the gardens and all.

I think that next weekend we're going to do something a bit simpler - like maybe just mow the lawn.

Strawberry Candy

The gardens at our bucolic manor feature historic daylilies.  Initially, I was not a big fan of daylilies.  I always associated them with funeral flowers - sort of depressing.

But now - after seeing thousands of daylilies both in person and photos - I've changed my mind.  I really like them!  The blooms come in all shapes and colors, and they start blooming in May and don't stop until October.   Some of them even bloom twice (early, then late).

The best part about them, though, is the foliage.  I think it look almost like an ornamental grass - so it's a great border plant.  And you can plant it on top of your bulbs.  The daylily hides the bulb foliage as it dies back which makes for less weeding. (And you know how I feel about weeding!)

This daylily, Strawberry Candy, is the most popular daylily in the northeast.  It's more pink in real life than the picture shows - it sort of glows pink.  And it's a small flower - 2 1/2-inches.  But it is delicate and it contrasts really well with its' foliage, so it stands out even from across the yard.

This is the first time that it has bloomed for us.  We get the plants when they are small so they can grow a good root system before they start producing flowers.  I think it makes for a stronger plant in the long run.

Strawberry Candy - delicious daylily eye candy for our garden!

Our Day Will Come

Our roadside daylilies have bloomed - 4 days ahead of "schedule" - but right on time for this year's garden.  All over the gardens we are starting to see their bright splashes of orange - quite lovely.

Of course, every year I have a "contest" with our neighbors to see whose daylilies will bloom first.  Even though I have extra earlies in the garden that start blooming in mid-May, they don't count when it comes to this contest.  It would just be pitting our wallets against each other - who could buy the earliest blooming plant - and would have nothing to do with the skill of the gardener.

So we only count the lowly common roadside daylily for the contest.  Same flower, same soil (practically), same sun (pretty much), same rain.  The question is plant placement.  We have both set stands of these daylilies throughout our properties.  We even have some from their gardens and they have some from ours because these daylilies spread like crazy, so whoever is willing to get to digging gets the overflow daylilies.

This year, I had a new stand of daylilies on a southern hillside, well protected, lots of sun, good soil, good amounts of water.  Everything was looking great.

But he beat me.  He beat me by 12 stinkin' hours.  I thought I had it in the bag when I got up in the morning and saw that his weren't in bloom - knowing that mine were ever so close to bursting open.  But when I looked again at the end of the day, I saw it - a lone daylily blossoming on his south-facing hillside. (Yes, that's why I planted mine on a south-facing hillside.  I'm not too proud to take gardening help!)

I thought, well, maybe, possibly, it was a cultivar, not a roadside.  But I knew better.  It was the first roadside of the season - 4.5 days early.

The next morning when I went out to my gardens and saw all of the roadsides in bloom, the only thing I could think to console myself was that where they had but 1 blossom, I had several in almost every stand (except the south-facing hillside stand).

So there you have it.  The "daylily cup" goes to the neighbors once more.  But next year - next year I'll have compost on my side!!!

Plantin' Time

I wanted to spend the day doing what this dragonfly was doing - just sitting on a rock and sunning myself.  But I knew that wasn't going to happen.  I knew it yesterday.  I knew it all last week.  But still, the thought crossed my mind.

Instead, I focused on the gardens.  When most people walk through our gardens, I don't think they see the same thing that we do.

This is a gardener's perspective of the garden.  Down and dirty on your hands and knees for hours at a time.

It's not really pretty.  It's actually kind of slimy and icky (those are technical gardening terms).  But it has to be done to get the garden cleaned up and ready for the tours.

I guess the secret would be to find some type of plant to plant in the gardens that was really low growing and would eat all of the dead plant material from the taller pretty plants.  I haven't found that plant yet.

So until then, my DH and I will be outside on our hands and knees going through each and every square inch of our gardens pulling out the dead foliage and weeding.

On the bright side, after we finish weeding a bed we can then put in the new plants.  So today was on the bright side because I put in a new peony tree and Hemerocallis 'Barbara Mitchell' (Pierce-C., 1984).  Barbara Mitchell is not an historic daylily, but she is pretty - all pink and ruffles with lots of 6-inch blooms.

And on the brightest side of all, the daylily circle is now weeded and done, done, done, done, done!  It's the worst bed to weed out of the whole garden because every year it has sticker bushes and nettles to go with the slime and muck that the daylilies generate, but I don't have to do it again until next year except for the occasional water sprout or dandelion.  Yay!

May 7th

The first daylily of 2012 is an historic Gold Dust (Yeld, 1905).  Isn't she a beauty?  The best part is - I beat my neighbor!!! My little Gold Dust came up first.

The reason that I like this particular flower so much is because it will bloom again in September.  You really have to love a flower that comes back at the end of the season just to say goodbye before the snow comes.

Of course, when I saw this little golden flower as I was coming home from work on Monday, I jumped out of the truck and quickly snapped a photo.  One photo was not enough, so Tuesday night I took some more - fortunately it was before the sun finished setting.

Can you believe it? I actually get to see the sun when I get home now.  You have to love that about springtime.

I love this view of Gold Dust because you can see the mahogany coloring on the back of the petals.  When the buds are closed, they are this rich mahogany - then they open to show that beautiful golden yellow.

Sweetie Scape

Each Spring my neighbor and I have a little competition over whose daylilies will bloom first.  I do plenty of trash-talking, bragging and all those things to taunt my gardener friend.  Each Spring he wins.  He has this wonderful well-established patch of tetraploid daylilies on a protected southern hillside and they bloom before anything in my gardens.

Last year I was so devastated my yet another defeat that, as I stood there admiring (to myself) his earliest bloomer, I declared that we were only counting common roadside daylilies for the competition.  Not true, but I needed a second chance.  Of course, his common roadside daylilies bloomed before mine also.

But this year... are you seeing what I'm seeing?  That's right - I see VICTORY!  My extra-early dayliles are in bud and a few are moments away from flowering.  Thanks to our mild winter, they are a few weeks ahead of schedule.  Thanks to careful selection for this particular garden the blooms go from May through October - and they are finally mature enough to put on a good show.

This year, victory is going to be mine!

Unless the deer eat them.

Finally Getting Some Blooms

It's nice to see that the daffodils in the Peony Garden are finally budding out.  Even though I know (I really know!) that Spring is coming earlier this year, a part of me was still thinking that the flowers would never comes back.

I go through the same thing every year though.  I know that the plants are there. I know that they have blossomed/fruited/leafed-out every year.  And yet somehow I seem to manage to worry that this year they won't come back.  Even knowing this about myself and Spring won't prevent me from worrying if the tomatoes will have fruit this Summer.  It's a thing.

But right now there is a promise of blooms in the garden.  Their little yellow flowers are seeking out the sun and waiting for the perfect time to open.

Of course we'll lose a few flowers to the chipmunks, squirrels and other outdoor creatures.  But that's okay - I planted extra for them so they can eat whatever they like.  

Well, they can eat the daffodils...when it comes time for the daylilies, I think we're going to have a discussion.

Quiet Panic

The garden tour is 22 weeks from today.  I have been sitting here all day contemplating that one little fact.  

In 22 weeks my Frans Hals daylilies will be in bloom and there will be hundreds of people traipsing around our gardens asking hundreds of questions.  We will serve them gallons of iced tea and lemonade, trays of fruit and cookies, and as much gardening knowledge as we can possible remember about our gardens.

In 21 weeks there will be printing deadlines and last minute decisions about table setups and posters.  Radio interviews, newspaper interviews and emails sent out all around.

In 20 weeks there will be press releases written and letters sent to media outlets, television ads and radio ads.

In 19 weeks there will be a big push for fundraising and thank you notes and follow-ups.  There will be handouts and flyers printed.

In 18 weeks the garden must be ready.

In 17 weeks the lawns must be mown and edged.

In 16 weeks the water features must be re-stoned.

In 15 weeks, all of the garden beds must be edged and mulched.

In 14 weeks all of the window boxes must be planted.

In 13 weeks all of the main annuals must be in the ground.

In 12 weeks, we can begin planting outdoors.

We have 12 weeks before we start planting outside and I haven't finished my winter gardening tasks - redoing the planting diagrams, updating the garden bed charts with anything that should/may come back again from this last year.  It's just not done.

This year will be our first year as president of the garden club.  It's a big deal to us - mostly because it acknowledges the huge amount of work we have done on the grounds since we bought our bucolic manor.  Mostly done by my Dear Honey.  Mostly done by hand.

Tomorrow we have our first meeting with the outgoing president of the garden club to talk about the tour.

I guess this marks the official start of summer.  I hope it doesn't snow.

What *is* that mess?

This mess of dead plant is really not a mess at all.  And it's not dead - just sleeping.  It's a daylily.  A Hemerocallis 'Imperial Lemon' (Harris-Benz, 1985) daylily to be more precise.

When we hosted a garden tour for our local region 4 American Hemerocallis Society club - the Hudson Valley Iris and Daylily Society (HVIDS for short), one of the guests asked for a few fans (fancy daylily name for plants) of this particular one.  I waited for it to die back before digging up a piece - this way the roots would get a chance to store up enough nutrients so it will bloom next year.  I know this is the spot where this flower is, at least I hope it's the spot.  Now, I just have to find the roots in this mess!

This is the desiccated scape (fancy word for stem) of the old flower.  If I go about 4 inches around the base of this scape, I should get a good sized root mass to gift.  When I push in the trowel, I'll move it out further if I meet real resistance from the roots, that way I won't slice through too many of the bigger ones and the plant will have a good chance of living through the winter.

I've freed up the roots from the garden bed and it is a really messy slimy mass of icky-ness (that's a technical term!).

The root mass is at the bottom and the dead leaves and stems are on top.  I'll trim off the leaves and stems to neaten it up and also to get rid of any nesting bugs or mold spores.  This will give the plant a better chance to make it in its' new home.

So pretty now!  There is one little light green shoot sticking out of the middle of the plant.  This particular daylily is semi-evergreen.  That means that the leaves don't completely die off over the winter, but they don't completely live either.  It's like a zombie - not quite alive, not quite dead.

I took a bunch of clean paper towels.

And laid the zombie daylily on them.

Then wrapped the paper towels around the zombie root mass making sure to leave the little shoot sticking out into the air on top.

I trussed up the paper towels with some twine - like a pork roast.  Ummm - zombie pork roast?

Then I wet the paper towels with tepid (not too hot, not too cold) water to keep the roots moist until they are planted.

Then I tucked the zombie pork roast into a plastic zip top bag to hold in the moisture - but I didn't close it all the way.

Then I stuck the zip top bag zombie pork roast into a plain brown paper bag - because no one needs to know that you are walking around town with a zombie pork roast in a plastic zip top bag.

And I took it over to the HVIDS lecture and gifted it to it's new owner.  He will plant it in his garden and next June the zip top bagged zombie pork roast will bloom.

And display these awesome 7-inch blossoms on 3-foot high stems.  Then because it is a reblooming daylily, it will come back to life again at the beginning of July and bloom again.  Sort of like a zombie coming back from the dead.  Or a zombie pork roast.

The Last Daylily

Hemerocallis 'Judge Orr' (Orr, 1939)

This lovely surprise was waiting for me in the garden this past weekend.  I just love the way it seems to be reaching out towards the sun.  Judge Orr is one of our historic daylilies (hemerocallis).  The fabulous thing about this particular flower is that it greets me at the beginning of the season - and then, just when I start to think there aren't any more daylilies left, it pops out again.  Rebloomers - you just have to love them!