I finally received my last order of registered daylilies today. There were only four plants in the order and I received one bonus plant.
This was the bonus plant. I received three fans of each of the above and two fans of 'Kachina Firecracker'
The plants should have arrived Tuesday, but for some reason the post office forgot where I lived it seems.
I got out early this morning trying to beat the heat, seeing I was soaked within 30 mins. I must have not gotten up early enough. Anyhow I had started yesterday digging out the darn oak roots to make a small bed for my new daylilies on order. I dug half the area yesterday and got a half wheelbarrow full of roots. I dug the other half this morning and got another half wheelbarrow full of roots. The plants just would not have been able to grow with all those oak roots taking up all the nutrients. The plants will probably have to be dug up in a couple of years and the bed again gone through and the roots dug out. I have never seen such a mass of fine roots as those darn oaks make. It is like a mat covering the top few inches of the soil. For several years I could not figure out what those roots were, finally I have realized the large roots of the oaks send out small roots that send out smaller roots and then this mass of feeder surface roots develop and try to choke out everything else.
I did not expect to be able to get all 18 spots for the new plants in this area, I thought maybe 10 at best. But I decided to reduce the spacing to approximately 24 inches and by fudging just a bit here and there I was able to make a home for all the plants coming in the fall. I went ahead and placed my vinyl blind name tags in the spots just to make sure the spacing looked acceptable.
Yesterday afternoon my wife and I saw this looking over the fence eyeing the garden.
Well, I have messed around and ended up ordering 18 new daylilies for fall delivery. So I had to start getting things ready and making room for some of them. Fortunately I realized the other day that I had a nice sunny area since the tree cutters trimmed up the oak trees and it was filled mostly with NOID daylilies. Plus my neighbor came over the other day and said she would like to have any extra plants I had because her sister has bought a house and has a large lot to fill with plants.
So I took my rake and using it like a hoe started digging up large mats of surface roots from the Oaks. They come loose in big chunks when I use my rake like that, and I just sift them out of the dirt into the wheelbarrow. I did not finish that section but I did remove all the plants that needed to go, I had 40 nice daylily fans by the time I finished. I'll try to dig the rest of the roots out tomorrow and start hauling in the compost to build up the soil. I spent quite a bit of time cleaning those fine roots from the oaks off of the daylilies put them in walmart bags and took them next door.
Now I have got to order new stakes and name plates for the newly arriving daylilies.
Edited: I just went ahead and ordered 30 of the stainless steel stakes with the heavy duty plates.
I have been harvesting a lot of daylily seeds lately, but most of them are repeats of crosses I already have, in the next few days I should be getting seeds from crosses I don't have any of.
I thought for the longest time that none of the seeds in my cups were going to sprout.Finally I had three to finally show some leaves. Then nothing, all those seeds in those cups and they are just sitting there. Well, I not only now have four more cups with new seedlings, the first of the new beds with the new wire cover over it is close to being full of cups now and I had the first seed to sprout yesterday. I am so relieved! That really perked me up to know that I now have eight seedlings in my cups!!!!!
I have been sick for the past five days, but am feeling way better now. Managed to stay out in the garden and the shed most of the morning. I found a 5gal. bucket of seedling mix, and I combined it with about half that amount of compost and made up a beautiful batch to fill my cups with and plant some of the seed I had actually managed to harvest but was too weak to plant. I still have a lot to plant, easier to harvest them than to clean, sort, bag, tag, etc. I love being able to go ahead and plant some in my cups in the raised beds and still have a reserve to plant over the winter, that gives me a better chance of at least having some plants come spring. I have worked out a little system of planting my seeds, that helps me stay organized and not be so likely to mismark things, make holes and forget to put seeds in them, etc. I catch myself doing some senior moment things pretty often now.
I have my newest daylily bloom for the first time the other day, but I missed it, thought I would catch the second bloom, but missed it also, so I have to catch the third bloom when I go back out.
Here it is, the third bloom on 'Take Me Along': Technically this is rebloom because it was blooming in the box when it arrived and had two scapes cut off of it.
It has rained, rained and rained some more here. Every day we get downpours, the bog is a swamp. I had some proliferation off a couple of plants a few days ago and I just stuck them in the wettest part of the bog (almost like just putting them in water). I checked on them the other day and had to push one back down because it had floated out of the ground. I checked today and could not belive how the roots had grown, but once again they were on top of the soil so I pushed them back down again, hope that does not break the roots.
I have had quite a few proliferation this year that I have planted in the ground, even some up on higher ground by the large oaks, but it has been raining so much I figure any where I plant them they will get watered every day when it rains.
Not only is the rainfall amount this time of year so unusual (at least for the past 10 years or so it seems) this is August and we are having day after day with the temperature in the 80's. Even as weak as I still am, I was able to go out and get a lot done this morning (nothing heavy of course) but normally even when I feel great it is too hot this time of year to even want to step out the door.
Some garden photos taken today:
I took the time the other day to go to Lowe's and buy two rolls of hardware cloth, just enough to cover another one of my aluminum cold frame tops. I have been wanting to do that
for some time. Finally took the time to get the measurements and figure out the size I needed. I was pleased with the job and hope to do the other two later, but it costs about $26.00 for the hardware cloth the cost of the screws and washers will get it up over $30.00. I do think it is well worth it though, I like the hardware cloth so much better than the netting, but the netting is so much cheaper.
