At the Festival of Flowers, I gave the 10:30 am seminar on daylilies. It was a great crowd with lots of eager gardeners. The San Antonio Daylily Society was selling bare root daylilies at the Festival and they essentially sold out of their daylilies – hooray, since it is our club’s main fundraiser. For the seminar, I created and gave a power point presentation (a little different for me), but it allowed me to show a lot more flowers and garden settings using daylilies. I think that I will expand it a little more to include a couple of other items and then I will continue to use it in some of my club and nursery seminars that I give.  At the Festival I didn’t take any daylilies to sell (since SADS was selling them), but I did take bearded iris and dwarf sunflowers (see last week’s blog). They went over great and it was a very successful day.

Next week at the Pearl Brewery Farmer’s Market, the Grand Opening of the Riverwalk Extension is occurring. So it will be another busy and eventful day at the market. Look for our plant listings on Thrusday night/Friday morning on the blog. I will also be giving a daylily and iris seminar at Schultz Nursery on Broadway at 2 pm. It is always great going to Schulz, since they continue to have a great array of choice plants.

In two weeks, June 6th, is our Annual Spring Garden Day here at the ranch, and Markets in the Country with Rhew Orchards (peaches), Green Country Farm (blackberries), and Cooper’s Garden Place. We are expecting a great crowd with lots of things going on. Some of the surrounding garden clubs will be having tables set up with information, and we will also some BBQ (hamburgers and sausage) plates available. We are already planning on what daylilies to have pre-dug for customers, and we will have some potted bearded iris, and other plants in 4″ pots, and 1 gal containers. See our listing of plants the week before the Garden Day. We hope to see a lot of you here even if you just want cruise through the gardens looking at ideas. Kids are more than welcome and we have lots of room for them to run around.

daylily, Francois Verhaert

We had our first club garden tour today by the 3 Oaks TEEA (Texas Extension Education Association). About 20 members strolled through the gardens with JoNelle. Since this has been a late season so far, there weren’t that many blooms on the daylilies, but a few specialty ones, Forbidden Fantasy, Fiery Temper, and Francois Verhaert were blooming.   The bearded iris Hello Darkness was also blooming.  Lots of good questions and interest in both several annuals and perennial plants. The members were able to see lots of daylily scapes coming up, so by June 6th we should have much more in bloom.

More than being able to vote for all the different awards, you begin to look at your daylilies in a slightly different light. You are supposed to judge the whole plant, not just it’s pretty face. The plants should be in proportion – scape height, flower size, and foliage. They should be healthy well established plants. For someone whole likes a lot of different plants and flowers, this is a little different, because it makes me look at the daylilies with a more critical eye. It makes me think of its attributes versus its’ drawbacks, but this also helps me recommend certain daylilies for certain applications.

daylily Hyperion

For example Hyperion is one of my favorite daylilies – not a razzle dazzle daylily, but a veritable workhorse in the garden. It has a clear yellow fragrant bloom held on tall scapes with nice foliage and it grows at a moderate rate. It is great for an area where you need coverage and want a mass of blooms. You could easily plant this away from your house and still see the blooms in mass. It is a cherie flower, and hardy beyond all get out. I’ve yet to kill one. It can go in the back of a border, and its’ clear yellow flower goes with almost all other colors.

Forbidden Fantasy on the other hand is a razzle dazzle daylily. Its’ deep purple bloom that has a yellow wire edge and is wonderful as a specimen plant. It is a hardy plant and puts on a nice show. Its’ leaves are pretty wide and stay nice. It works well in the front of the border or as a single highlight against other orange or yellow flowers. In future blogs, I will go through and talk about individual daylily plants (as well as other plants) and what I like or don’t like about them.

daylily Forbidden Fantasy

The only requirements for being a AHS Garden Judge is that you must keep a log of gardens that you visit per year (usually done by either going to the regional meeting, or to a national convention) and then voting every year. Oh darn, someone is going to make me  have to see nice gardens and spend time looking at all the daylilies! Your appointment is good for five years. So if you are a AHS member and think you might enjoy being a garden judge – go to either a regional meeting or a national convention and take the garden judges class. I think you’ll enjoy it.

H. Jerry Pate Williams

Last night I did a seminar for the Men’s Garden Club of San Antonio at the San Antonio Garden Center (next to the Botanical Gardens on Funston). What a great group of gardeners and fun people! I spoke on both daylilies and bearded iris, and just a tad on cannas. Lots of great questions on both daylilies and bearded iris. Over the next week I’ll address those questions on the blog, because if one person has the question, then others will too. As the title suggests, the Men’s Garden Club is open to women – in fact about half the members were women. They meet the first Thursday of each month at the Garden Center at 7 PM. If you live nearby and want to know about gardening, it is a great place to pick up information and meet fellow gardeners. I know that they will also have booths at the Festival of Flowers on May 23rd, and also at the Folklife Festival.

H. Forbidden Fantasy

For the seminar I brought two different daylily scapes with me so people could see one blooming and realize that not all daylilies are simple yellows or old oranges. The first daylily was Jerry Pate Williams which is a melon colored double. It doubles 100% of the time. It is a great soft color and flower. It is good for the front of the border, as a specimen plant, or in a large container by your front door. The second daylily scape was of Forbidden Fantasy. It is a single round dark purple with a yellow ruffled edge and a yellow throat. Great as a specimen plant. Looks good with yellow flowering plants. It also would look good next to some lighter lavenders, as well as some red flowering plants.

Let’s talk a moment about double flowering daylilies. You saw that I said Jerry Pate Williams was 100% double. That means every time it blooms it will be a double. Some other daylilies are only 90% or 70% of the time. That means you could have single flowers on them some of the time, and then some double blooms. These percentages are approximate. When you read the descriptions on the doubles – especially the new hybrids, they usually list what the percentage is from the person who hybridized them.

Bold Wonder

Well, before you know it the May Flower Show will be here. Will your daylilies be ready? I am starting to see some scapes come up, but will the right ones come up at the right time – that is always the perverbial question. The answer is always the same – what comes up is what I will bring.

This will be my third year in the flower show. My first year, I brought some flowers and my 2 kids since Marty had something to do that day. I wasn’t going to enter the show, just put up some flowers for people to see on the education table, but several friends told me I had to enter several of them. I didn’t know a thing about what I was doing, I just followed their lead and low and behold I got several ribbons – even a purple!!!!

The second year, Janis talked me into entering the tricolor. My idea of flower arranging is go pick the flowers that you like in the yard, stick them in a vase and there you go. I didn’t think that would do  for the tri-color, so I actually thought about what vase/s to use and what flowers to bring. Well I didn’t win anything, but I did like the arrangement.

This year, I went ahead and signed up for the tri-color again. I know it will be very busy since I will also have the kids and they want to enter their flowers in show. See, yet another first for me and them. So I guess we will see what flowers are blooming on May 9th. If you are in the San Antonio area, join us on May 9th at the San Antonio Garden Center, 555 Funston, SA (across the parking lot from the botanical garden). It is open to the public from 1 pm until 4 pm. There will also be a daylily plant sale by the SADS club – usually great buys for unique daylilies! So come and see all the beautiful flowers and arrangements. It is always a great day.

I've Got A Sectret Bearded Iris

This morning I delivered a load of bearded iris and daylilies up to the Texas Hill Country Garden Club garage and plant sale, this Sat. March 28th. I know that they are pricing them very reasonably and they have a good selection! With finally getting some rain in the area, it is time to start getting those plants into the ground for a  good bloom period.  Their sale will be in the Whispering Hills Subdivision, the cross streets are Yorksire and Gainsborough. It is a great group of people of varying gardening expertise who get together and share information and the love of gardening (some good food too!).  If you are in the Hill Country (just north of San Antonio by Spring Branch) you should swing by and check them out. They also do a number of community projects throughout the year.