Cherry Hill Garden

 Every year is a bit different, what can we say about the past season here in west/central Indiana? Last frost was about right on time (mid April) with no late, hard freezes.  So far, so good. We had heavy moisture right through May and then a sudden drought in June...not good as we moved into the bloom season!  We did start to water weekly, and had good bloom, but got almost no seed set from any of our early pollinations. Some years, we have so much rain in June that our road is flooded out, but not this year.  July gave us a bit of moisture, but not enough to make up for a very dry June. We watered part of the garden almost daily and did not have bud drop, as I feared we might. We actually ended up with a good crop of seeds from later pollinations.  We have a bountiful crop of seeds especially for the 'late and fancy' program.  Right now we have 2995 seeds cleaned and in storage, which is about all we have the space for, both inside for starting them, as well as outside for p

A Complex Process? If you look through the 'helpful tips' shared on sites like Facebook for starting daylily seeds, you'll get the impression that it is a complicated process and apparently getting more complicated every season. Refrigeration, dormancy, peroxide, wet and dry storage, heat mats, pre-sprouted seeds, fungicides, and fungus gnats!   Some growers pre-sprout seeds in paper towels and then carefully tweeze them apart so as to try to not break off the roots or tops as they are placed individually into planting holes.  Some growers use heat mats or a large individual pot for each seed. Some growers start their seeds indoors in the fall under lights, and then have six or seven months of caring for seedlings before spring. Once they get tall enough to touch the lights, they get a 'haircut' with scissors. Some people measure out peroxide to add to the soaking solution.  Some growers transplant very small seedlings into bigger pots to give them 'root room

What is the best time to plant daylilies?  After the spring weather is settled in mid-May?  Any time they are actively growing?  In the fall after they go dormant?  From our experience, you may want to consider much earlier planting, say, around your last frost date.  We are zone 5/6 in west-central Indiana.  Most daylily growers wait until mid-May to ship to our area.  If they are Southern growers, they start shipping to the south and work their way upward, zone by zone, and our shipments are usually mid- to late May.  Northern growers wait until their weather is settled and the plants have good growth before shipping to us, also around the same time.  Both northern and southern growers are shipping actively growing plants,  with many southern ones showing developing bloom scapes or even already bloomed-out scapes when they are shipped.  Shipping requires the removal of most of the top growth of the plant to get it into a shipping carton, which goes along with the best planting practi

 Early on, we took the advice of the Morry family (Canadian hybridizers with a blog) and crossed Northern daylilies to Southern Daylilies to bring in hardiness from the North and add fancy edges from the South.  As our hybridizing programs matured, we quit breeding with Southern plants except ones that survive well here for us.  We are zone 6, sometimes 5, but with almost no snow cover with temperatures up and down all winter, and sometimes down to ten below, Fahrenheit. Many southern plants that survive further north (into Canada, zone USDA zone 4) with snow cover, don't make it through the winter here.  We have tired of losing so much time and money on southern plants and are now mostly adding only northern plants, as well as using our own material for hybridizing.  So, after 14 years of hybridizing, we can look back and identify the plants that have been the best parents in terms of passing on health, bud count, and a pretty face.  Here are a few of our favorite parents by othe

 In many plant families there are white-flowered horticultural forms around.  Roses?  Check!  Hibiscus?  Check!  Hostas?  Check!  Tulips?  Check!  Daffodils?  Check!  Carnations?  Check!  Zinnias?  Check!  Daylilies?  Well, there's apparently only "near white" and as most growers know, the near-whites are very pale yellows or very pale pinks.  This is pretty much true of many other plant families, but daylily hybridizers and growers are loathe to call a daylily 'white'.  Why? Check out Facebook and see some 'pink' daylilies. There are peach, salmon, rose, old rose, silver pink, puce, cerise...you get the point?  There are very few that are truly pure pink.  I hear about this often, since it is a pet peeve of Nancy's.  If you call it 'pink', it better be pink!  Are you color blind? Sloppy? Lazy?  That is SO OBVIOUSLY 'peach' and NOT pink!  "Pink" daylilies are very rarely pink. Look up descriptions and photos of 'red' d

 Use the most promising of your own seedlings In the 14 years we have been hybridizing, our focus has taken several turns and twists and at least one derailment. When we started buying, we didn't care if something was a diploid or a tetraploid.  We just wanted one of every color!  Three years later, after an eye-opening trip to Soule's Garden in Indianapolis, Nancy started us down the path toward creating new daylilies on our own. At first we were infatuated with teeth and creating more daylilies with teeth, so several years into hybridizing, we started to discard all the diploids we had collected.  We were going to create some toothy tets! Following our success at creating a beautiful toothy bloom on a plant registered as Rosy Cotton's Ribbons, we lost sight of specific hybridizing goals and crossed anything with everything. Looking back on our hybridizing records, we suddenly had no focus at all.  Progress with our seedlings really started once we focused on breeding with