This is just a reminder that today I fertilized the great majority of the daylilies for the spring. I used a mixture of what I had on hand. I used two cups of milorganite , 2 cups of 29-0-4, and two cups of sand just to thin the concentration down some. I mixed that all together and then put two table spoonfuls to each established plant. I used much less with the seedlings in the cups but the same mixture, we shall see how that worked later.I used a Wal-mart ice cream tub to mix it all together in and used three of those containers full. That got about two thirds of all the daylilies. It is suppose to rain tonight so I am hoping that will get the fertilizer down to the roots quickly.
Just a follow up, last night it rained all night and continues to rain today, looks like we will end up with around three inches. That should work the fertilizer in really good!
Even with this cold I have, I can feel spring just around the corner. I was taking a walk though the garden this morning (took my i-pad down with me) and took a few photos to remind me of the different stages the daylilies are at during this time of year. As I walked along looking I thought about the many things that would need to be done in the garden over the next year. At this time of year there is very little going on, but the weeds are still growing so that at least gives me something to focus on. I put down tons of mulch again this year in the garden and that really does help keep the weeds down, yet so many still manage to sprout and they grow like "weeds"! I normally don't use the i-pad for photos, but I have been playing with it a lot during my computer fiasco so I used it, I will go back to the camera. One thing about the computer crash and a reinstall of win 10, it did fix some display issues I had been having with my photos looking distorted on my new monitor, yay!
I don't seem to remember from year to year, but to the best of my remembrance I have done a good job of keeping the weeds down as much as ever this year. Once again, this only applies to the garden and not the lawn, what a weed bed my lawn always seem to be.
I don't seem to be able to think "out of the box" in this case actually "out of the garden" very much. If I am not physically in the garden my mind just does not seem to be able to comprehend all the things there are to be done. Once I am physically present in the garden there starts to appear an almost never ending list of trivial things that could be done.
Anyhow, here are a few photos just to show a few examples of the different growth stages the plants are currently in. As a side note, in Win 10 it is still possible to get your photos arranged my month(my preferred method), but it has taken a lot of searching to finally be able to do it, they did not make it easy! For me it certainly makes finding a photo when I want to add it easier with very little work, I know there are better methods with more detailed labeling, but this has been my preferred method for years now and I would hate to have to change.
Seedlings:
Seedlings:
Mature plants just emerging from dormancy:
Mature plant with dead leaves pulled off.
Friday I had a notice to do a Win 10 update, said it was required for my computer to continue functioning. Well after the down load my computer was completely out of commission. I have just now finally managed to pretty much get it back to how I want it. It took a lot of calling and hunting and working with Microsoft, but after many hours of phoning, and loading finally things seem to be working, what an ordeal. Just hope everything continues working now, I certainly don't want to have to go through all that again, I don't think I could stand it right now, having a cold was not help either, hope it's not the flu.
I was lucky not to loose any photos that I can miss, but all the favorites I had in the computer were wiped clean. I had way too many anyhow, they seem to accumulate to the point that it is almost too much trouble to search though them sometimes.
It has been some time since I posted here. Due to a family situation things have taken a drastic turn in our normal life style.
Hope to be more back in the normal swing of things later this year.
Today I joined the National Hemerocallis Society, not a big deal but highly unusual for me to join anything like that. I could get most of the benefits without being a member, I just felt like for all they do and all the info they provide and the fact that our database on daylilies here would not be nearly the same without their input, I should at least support them with a membership.
I just finished laying out my second new daylily seedling bed, now I have two new beds connected to each other. I plan to add at least one more this year for all the seedling I started. The beds are 10'x10' and the plants will basically be growing in shredded leaves that I built the bed up with. I added a lot of leaves and pine straw since the fall on a continuing basis, and today added a final layer of finely shredded leaves to the second bed. I have also been adding milorganite and high nitrogen lawn fertilizer to help with the decomposition of all the organic material. We had a good rain last night and I shredded up two truck loads of leaves yesterday so things were right to finish the second bed today. When I finished added the final layer of leaves I added another heavy dose of milorganite and high nitrogen fertilizer. Then I drug the hose over and wet everything down good even though we had just had a good rain.
The larger plants at the top are divisions of plants that have multiplied. The ones in pots are also. I also have a small bed of seedlings I grew from seeds received from Hemlady planted next to the top of my first new seedling bed.The stakes in the photo are 10 feet apart.
Here you can get an idea of the height the beds have been raised to with organic matter.
That is my neighbors house in the back ground, and those large tree trunks laying down form a back stop for all the organic matter. My neighbor cut some trees down and just laid the trimmed trunks along the property line and with the trees I had cut it made a perfect spot for the new beds.
I have my first daffodils trying to bloom after the rain, hard to believe spring will almost around the corner after having such a cold winter so far.
Here are how my little seedlings are looking. I found some old venetian vinyl blinds by the road the other day when out picking up leaves. I stripped them out and cut them into 4 inch and 8 inch sections for plant markers. I will use the 8 inch ones for the daylily seedlings. I am hoping to be able to just put the seedling numbers on the markers, but have yet to decided exactly how and when to assign the numbers. I have given each of the crosses their own number, but no need in making up markers until I see exactly how many I finally have to plant.
These are just some of them, I have many more that will have to be planted. All of these are planted in plastic cups that are then the cups were planted into the ground.
I actually stepped out the door today, then went back inside and put on a long sleeved shirt over my short sleeved one. I already had jeans on so I was comfortable with the cool weather and the breeze. I got up and headed out to pick up a load of pine straw before the trash man could beat me to it. It was very trashy pine straw but there was a full truck load of it and for the purpose and spot I had it mind it would do fine. Yesterday I picked up three loads and the day before I got one nice load. I still need many more loads.
I have been able to do so much over the past few days as the weather has really cooled off. I went out a few days ago expecting it to be cool, but only after I realized how exhausted and tired I had suddenly become did I realize the temp was over 90 and the humidity was 94 percent. My doctor wants me to take a stress test, but if that did not kill me I don't think the stress test will either. I have always had a low heart rate and that is the main reason for the test, but a few other things did not check out so well in my last lab work, so as I seem to be aging faster and faster each year I guess I need to get checked out.
I managed to get the truck stuck the other day as I was unloading. I kept thinking if I went back a little further I would be able to get some traction. I kept thinking that and each time went a little further down the hill, finally ended up in the middle of my rose bed and realized I was going nowhere. I have tow straps and a cable pulley, but never can seem to figure out how those darn ratchets work. So right off the bat I made myself relax and slow down and take the time to actually figure them out instead of struggling until I accidently got them to work (my normal method). Lucky for me, I had a large oak within reaching distance of the straps and with the help of my grandson managed to winch the truck slowly out of the flower bed, with almost no damage to the flowers.
I have mulched several beds with pine straw, weeded several beds (several times), and got so much other stuff done lately. Still, everytime I turn around there is more to do. Today I was going to try and find a place to store all my tomato cages,(I had way more than I needed). I realized that one end of the fence had three rows of smaller squares than the rest of the fencing. So being I needed more daylily cages I cut them all off and used the fourth row of squares as the legs or spikes to hold the cages in place. That left me with 5 full size squares of fencing which I cut down the middle and used all the cages to make daylily cages to keep the critters away from the plants. So no storage needed. I might regret that in the spring, but I don't plan to plant the huge plants I normally plant, just smaller ones if any.
I had wanted to redo a section of the bog bed since early this year. I had even started planning on it last year when gathering mulch materials and compost materials. The bog is so wet and muddy all year, and especially this year with the huge amount of rain we have had. The daylilies had sunk way down and in addition I had continuously added more mulch around them. So, they were really down deep. I dug them all up, found new places in dryer spots for a few that were not doing very well. I did it one row at a time. I would dig a row then fill the low area with compost (many wheelbarrows of compost) then when it looked pretty level, I would set the newly dug plants on top. With the huge root systems this would raise the plants anywhere from a six inches to a foot. Then I just added compost around the plants and smoothed everything out. I had done this on a smaller scale before and it seemed to work great. Anyhow, that project is finished except for mulching the entire area with pine straw.
This afternoon I started using a notebook to log in all my cups of daylily seedlings, I still have more to enter, but I am well over a hundred cups of seedlings so far.We have not had any rain for a while so I spent quite a bit of time watering all the new plants and the seedlings. The more established plants have to fend for themselves.
The last bloom on Nosferatu bloomed today, and the last daylily to bloom in the garden will be 'Grand Palais' that I received from Kabby.
'Nosferatu':
'Grand Palais':
