Cherry Hill Garden

Note:   'F1' refers to the first generation of a cross of Fulva with something else.  'F2' is an 'F1' crossed again to another daylily, and so on.     Why in the world would anyone breed with Ditch Lily? When I gave my 'Fulva Presentation' to the Michigan Daylily Society, Ginny Pearce asked why I started this program and  I was not able to vocalize a coherent response, though we are ten years into this, having started in 2013.  I guess my best thought is 'why not?' or just to see what I could get from it. Yes, Fulva is orange, but that is a 'plus' in my book. It is also hardy and healthy. It's the source of color for all modern daylilies that are orange, red, pink, and purple, as well as brown.  So, why would I not give it a try? 'Fulva' is not a single uniform species Most people assume that the 'ditch lily' is the one and only representative of Hemerocallis Fulva. This is not true.  The species is actually a fertile

 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