Daylily Seminar at Antique Rose Emporium
This was a full weekend of seminars and rain (we had 1.7 inches over the two days!! now hopefully we will get some more). The first was on Saturday at Fanick’s Garden Nursery in San Antonio on Holmgreen RD. We had a great group of people who wanted to learn more about daylilies and bearded iris. The second was today at the Antique Rose Emporium talking about daylilies. There were lots of questions from both groups and I will cover a few the basic ones that I heard at both groups this weekend.
Many people have heard that only the evergeen daylilies do well down here because of the heat. I have not found that to be true. I have about half of my daylilies are dormants (their leaves die back in the late fall/early winter and then re-emerge in the spring). They have performed well down here without any problem, and in fact I have a couple of dormants that perform like semi-evergreens or even evergreens. So don’t hesitate to buy a dormant.
The second question was that people were concerned about wether daylilies were cold tolerant. Yes, they are most definately cold tolerant. The are hardy up through the US and into Canada. They even grow some evergreens in Wisconsin. So if you live north of San Antonio you do not need to do anything to prepare them for the winter cold.
I have an old clump (daylilies or iris), when should I divide it? For daylilies you can divide it in either the spring (March through May and sometimes June) or the fall (September through November). For bearded iris, you should divide in the fall (August through October). Bearded iris can be divided at other times, but you won’t necessarily get a bloom that year if you divide in the spring.
What is the biggest mistake people make with daylilies or iris? For daylilies they would be in this order: 1. over watering and letting them stand in water (they want good drainage) 2. planting too deep (plant at the juntion of the crown and the roots) 3. no morning sun. For bearded iris: 1. planting too deep (you should see the top of the rhizome), 2. over watering/poor drainage (bearded iris like water, but they do not like to sit in it), 3. no morning sun, 4. not dividing (when a clump gets old it will stop blooming in the center – a sign to lift and divide).
What and when do I fertilize? For daylilies a long term, slow release fertilizer in the fall and again in the spring, then water soluble fertilizers in the spring. For bearded iris bone meal in the fall, early spring (Febrauary), and again after they have bloomed. Compost 2 – 4 times per year for all your plants.
In future blogs I will go into more depth on these questions and others. If you have a specific question about either daylilies or iris, please send a comment in and ask me or you can e-mail me directly at jonelle@jd2ranch.com. I will post the answers in the blog, because if one person has a question – others do too.