And so it begins ...

Although there might be one or two, or several, other daylilies that open up a blossom first, Cape Cod Cousin is the one that really kicks it off for us; maybe because for so many years, it was our earliest, and the one whose buds we kept watching with anticipation.
This year's strange spring weather led us to think we were going to have an early season; we scheduled our first Open Garden Day a week earlier than we might have, and then three swift late frosts set everything back. Wisely, we held off on advertising, and now realize that there are not yet enough daylilies in bloom to open this Sunday ... nobody wants to come and look at a forest of foliage! But oh, there are hundreds and hundreds of buds quivering with promise, and we expect by the following weekend we'll be able to fling the doors open (figuratively, of course).

How many seedlings would you be willing to plant in the hopes of finding one special new hybrid? 10? 100? 1000? more?

The “big names” in daylily hybridizing typically make hundreds, maybe thousands of crosses and plant hundreds of thousands of seedlings each year. This, of course, requires acreage and employees and usually, a location south of the Mason-Dixon line.

But there are loads of backyard daylily growers who have a keen interest in hybridizing as well, who necessarily grow smaller numbers of seedlings, and sometimes produce a hybrid special enough to be registered.

Like so many, I started simply planting the random crosses accomplished by the flowers themselves. Those seed pods you find at the end of the season contain shiny black seeds, and if planted, many of them will germinate. The more varieties of daylilies you have, the more potential for each of these seeds to produce new and different varieties. Here in the north, seedlings will not flower the first year; this is one of those endeavors that helps to develop patience.

Most of my first batch of seedlings flowered in the second year. Like any new mother, I was entranced with my new “babies” – well, some of them, anyway! Experienced hybridizers advise waiting until the second or third year of flowering to really see what you’ve got – requiring even more patience *sigh*.

The next logical step was to purchase seeds from experienced hybridizers … and so I did. Some of those began flowering last summer: curly ruffled edges, interesting colors … whetting appetites to see what they’ll be like as second-year blooms.

Presently we have about 400 seedlings in various stages of growth. Not that many, in the world of daylilies, but more than enough to weed and fuss over. Watching them send up their first scapes is like looking at all the presents under the Christmas tree, wondering what's inside each one. Won't be too much longer now!

Little Kitchen Herb Garden

My definition of “herb” comes from having worked at a 17th-century living history museum, Plimoth Plantation, where pretty much anything other than field crops was given that appellation. Lettuce, sorrel, spinach and burnet were “sallet” herbs, and the kitchen gardens were filled with all manner of edible and medicinal plants.

When I moved to this old farm seven years ago, I planted a large herb garden, bringing slips of many of those old-fashioned herbs with me – elecampane, lemon balm, wormwood, rue, teasel, tansy, comfrey, and so on, along with the more typical kitchen herbs. This good-sized bed is perhaps 100 feet from the house; call me spoiled, but it seemed awfully far on a cold evening or a rainy day to dash out and fetch a handful of this or that while cooking.

And so a more functional kitchen herb garden was born, just three or four steps from the kitchen deck. So much better! Here I keep the perennial culinaries that I use – sage, thyme, chives, winter savory, oregano, sorrel, salad burnet – and plant the annuals that are often plucked just a few leaves at a time: spinach, kale, basil, cilantro, rosemary, bronze fennel. During the winter, our coffee grounds are easily tossed into the annual beds, and a layer of finished compost in the spring keeps everything happy.

New farm workers have arrived!

Last night, under cover of darkness, eleven imported farm workers were slipped into their new quarters here on the farm. This was done stealthily, of course, in order not to disturb the old hands who were already sleeping soundly … the fewer dustups, the better.

A friend of a friend is moving south and needed to find a home for her one-year-old hens … and that’s exactly what I was looking for, hens who are still young but already laying. A perfect match! Besides the wonderful fresh eggs for both table and sale, we benefit from the rich combination of coop shavings and manure that gets composted and added to our growing beds.

Our “old” girls – three years old, now, and ten in number – are Barred Rocks and red hybrid layers; these new hens are White Brahmas and Red Comets. The time-tested way to introduce new additions to the flock is to wait until everyone’s asleep, slide the new ones into the coop, and when they all wake up in the morning, there’s minimum fuss. Early this morning we heard some louder-than-usual squawking coming from the direction of Coop de Ville, but by the time we climbed to hill to take a look, all the ladies seemed to be just hanging out.

And then – a faceoff in the pen: a heavy young Brahma versus an aging Red. Size and youth won out (*sigh* -- what happened to experience and cunning?), and the Red suffered some minor lacerations. Thus a new pecking order comes into being. Regime change can be a bit messy.

Only 10 eggs were collected today, but since everyone’s got eggs in the pipeline, we’ll hope that they’ll settle in and resume normal laying soon.