Hot, dry, and over too soon ...

Here we are at the end of July, when normally there is still an abundance of daylilies in bloom. After talking with other gardeners and nursery growers, though, it’s clear that what I’m experiencing here is the norm in this region – most of the blooms have gone by already, and great swaths of the gardens are nothing but foliage.

There’s a friend who always goes away at the beginning of August, and cuts all her blooming daylilies first to bring them with her; she has none left to cut this year. Another gardener has pointed out that so many things are way ahead of schedule … goldenrods in bloom, an abundance of monarchs, the nesting of certain creatures, acorn drop. I can hear the insect sounds of late summer, and keep thinking that it’s the end of August, from the feel of things.

This leads, of course, to worried speculation about the coming winter, as if there’s some connection to be made. Maybe there is, but we mere mortals cannot divine it yet. That doesn’t stop us from fretting that it will be early and severe. Indeed, more extreme weather seems to be the norm these days, and certainly we’ve heard that same prediction for the future. The National Climatic Data Center says that June 2010 was the warmest since record-keeping began in 1880; both NOAA and NASA rate this year’s January-to-June as the warmest such period on record. And, of course, rainfall’s been in short supply this summer as well … not a banner year for gardens, that’s for sure.

Xeriscaping is the art and science of using drought-resistant plants in the landscape, and daylilies fill that bill, along with many of the other perennials we grow here. The vegetable beds have drip irrigation, which uses only 30% of the water of overhead sprinklers. The newly-planted fruit trees and bushes have needed supplemental watering all season, without established deep root structures. And the greenhouse, full of pepper and tomato plants, has needed hand watering every day during this long hot summer. Such a difference from the wet summer of 2009!

Deb's garden

Having a big old farmhouse with an oversized lawn and garden beds spread all over, I’ve tended to plant taller daylilies with larger blossoms. Proportionally, it makes sense, and since my gardens tend to be an overgrown riot of mixed flowers and herbs, like English cottage gardens, the blossoms don’t get visually lost so easily.

But my friend Deb has a different situation and a different sensibility; a lovely smaller house in the city, with perfectly manicured, curving garden beds. Deb particularly loves the smaller pastel daylilies, tends them lovingly, knows them all by name, keeps the clumps from getting too large, and gives them breathing room. With her artist’s eye, she carefully juxtaposes them with a variety of striking hostas, ferns, other perennials, and unusual trees and shrubs. And as her daylilies increase, she shares her bounty so generously with her friends … the smaller daylilies in my collection are nearly all varieties that she has given to me at one time or another.


Deb also has a lovely habit of floating one or more daylily blossoms in a shallow dish of water, bringing them to the table where perhaps for the first time each one can be closely examined and admired at length. It’s one thing to gaze appreciatively at a lovely garden scene; it’s another to look, really look, at one blossom close up, daylily or any other. Flowers are utterly amazing, as could be said of pretty much any of Mother Nature’s creations, don’t you think? It’s rare that we take the time to focus in that way, though, and I’m grateful to Deb for drawing attention to this level of appreciation of nature. And I’m always grateful to have gardening friends who are all about daylilies too.

Mail-order mistakes --- grrrr!

For the last five years or so, I’ve been ordering many daylilies by mail. Of course I love to visit other daylily farms in person, too, and purchase some that way as well; but I don’t want my collection to be simply a repeat of what the other area nurseries offer. Many of my cultivars have come from farms in Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Illinois, Virginia, New York – you get the idea.

But oh, how frustrating it is to me when, after waiting a year for a new-to-me plant to bloom, it turns out to be NOT what I ordered. And it’s amazing to me how often this happens.

Just this morning, the long-awaited first bloom of Lady Neva opened. I was eager to see this “tall, soft buff yellow with rose eyezone” spider at last. But what I got was a short, bright yellow-orange self, and not a spider. Obviously, the wrong daylily – again.

Sometimes I’m delighted with the “wrong” daylily, and just keep it (actually, only once! – that one became Maison Rouge, a deep coral/red beauty, in the photo here). Usually I notify the seller that they made a mistake, and I’d like what I paid for, and offer to send back the mislabeled fans. Most of the time the sellers rectify the situation – some begrudgingly, some with sincere apologies. One seller never responded at all. (Makes it easier to know who NOT to buy from next time!)

Certainly it’s challenging when you’re digging daylilies for customers, and not all of the scapes have open blossoms; it’s important to tag each plant as you dig it, and to pay attention to make sure you’re packing up the right order. Being human, we all make mistakes. But also having been on the customer side of this situation many times, I am pretty persnickety about making sure my customers get what they ordered.

Since I’m kvetching about mail-order, I’ll add one more pet peeve: sellers who alter their photos via Photoshop to the point that it’s no longer “what you see is what you get.” For example, I ordered an Oliver Dragon Tooth awhile back, admiring the lovely white-and-purple blossom in the photo; the real-life Oliver is actually mauve and purple. Now I know to do a Google image search first, and see what shades predominate in the results.

Beneficial bugs

The other day I noticed a blurb on the cover of a popular back-to-the-earth-type magazine that shouted something like “Insect-Proof Your Garden!” Knowing this is another one of those headlines that promises more than it can deliver, I looked inside; sure enough, the article was all about the magic of having an insectary in your vegetable garden.

What’s that, you ask? Well, the idea is this: certain blossoms are known to attract beneficial insects, the kind that prey on the nasty bugs, slugs, mites, thrips, caterpillars and other baddies that gnaw on your carefully-tended veggies. It makes sense, then, to plant some of these flowers in or near your vegetable beds, therefore creating an “insectary,” an area that offers habitat, shelter, and an alternative food source for the good guys.

We did just that several years ago. The photo shows our insectary row on the left; bee balm, Shasta daisies, and rudbeckia were in bloom at the time. In addition, the row contains coneflower, lemon balm, yarrow, thyme, tansy, bronze fennel, angelica, and more; annuals often include sunflowers, cosmos, and cleome. Umbelliferous flowers – ones with umbrella-like blossoms, such as dill and Queen Anne’s lace, are particularly good ones for this purpose. You don’t need a huge assortment – half a dozen different types offer a variety of attractions, and they can be grown from seed.

Certain plants are much better than others for this purpose; google "insectary" to learn a whole lot more.

But, let’s get real: an insectary will not “insect-proof” your garden. Nothing will do that. It can help lessen the impact of the undesirable bugs, for sure; although I cannot measure it, it seems apparent to me that we have noticeably fewer insect issues since our insectary was established. It needs only weeding, and not too much of that if you mulch the plants well. And, perhaps less practical but certainly enjoyable, it adds beauty and color to the vegetable patch. What’s not to like about it?

Seaward

Lately I’ve been hearing the call of the sea, and that’s something that surprises me. I’ve always thought of myself as a forested-hills-and-mountains country girl; during the many years I lived on Cape Cod, I never felt at home, and always missed the north country.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not unhappy living here. It feels right to me. But a number of times this spring and summer, I’ve felt a longing for the coast. A few times I’ve heard some noise or other that sounded eerily like a foghorn, and I’ve been transported; a few times I’ve sworn I’ve smelled salty air. Never one for the daytime beach after skin cancer cropped up on my shoulder years ago, what comes to mind are the evening beach and canal walks, the boats, the historic towns that lie along the shore, quaint cottages with sweet little gardens bordered by picket fences, the tumbling rose bushes along the edges of yards and climbing up onto arbors.

The beach beckons to my daughter, who goes back several times a year as much for that as visiting family; my husband, a former tuna fisherman and Coastie, misses being on the water. But we know the coastal life we’d like is not available to us. Land is terribly expensive there, especially if your heart cries out for a small farm, and the days of living quietly by the sea are long gone. As the years went by on the Cape, more and more houses, big box stores, and multiple-lane highways were constructed; it’s irrevocably changed into something I don’t care for.

But a little vacation further up along the New England or Nova Scotian coast might be just the thing. After daylily season is done, of course.

Seedlings Part 1

So far, there are three, maybe four seedlings this year that seem to have some real “possibilities.” Just don’t ask me to define that too extensively yet! My disclaimer, in case anyone should assume differently: I am very much an amateur in the world of daylily hybridizing and seedlings, and learning as I go.
That said, I’ve been avidly reading online postings by professional hybridizers for some time, and whatever articles I can find on the subject. As with anything, there’s a lot of fact and opinion, and often it’s hard to tell which is which. And have I mentioned yet that I’m new at this?

So let’s begin with the deep rose seedling at the top, called 08Q3 for now. Parents are Mary Alice Stokes (red rose bitone, 25” high, averages 24 buds) and Darla Anita (lavender, 30” high and 40 buds); seed came from a hybridizer. This looked nice last year when it first bloomed, and even better this year. It’s 23” tall, and has already multiplied to 3 fans, but only one scape so far; 2-way branching and 8 buds. Not spectacular vigor, but okay. I’ll soon move it from the seedling bed into a nursery bed where it will have more room to grow, and we’ll see if it grows into more of the bud habits of its parents. So this one is, I think, a “maybe.”

The next picture is a sibling of 08Q3, 08R3, taken last year and showing some promise. It hasn’t bloomed yet this year. (Clearly I haven’t figured out how to insert my photos where I’d like to, and they’re still all clumped together in the beginning of the post – sorry!)

Next, the salmon-pink seedling (the photo isn't showing its true color), numbered 08Z2 in my records. It came from seed I purchased from a hybridizer, with San Simeon as one of the parents. And this is one occasion where the offspring seems to look identical to the parent – because the hybridizer said he “crossed” San Simeon with itself. I have no idea how this is regarded in the world of hybridizing, as I haven’t read about it anywhere; is it actually SS, like a division would be? Or is it considered a “new” cultivar? I’ll have to ask some people in the know. In any case, SS is listed by the AHS as being 25” high with a 5.5” blossom; mine is 22” and 5.5”, perfectly acceptable for a 3rd-year seedling in a different location. It’s got only one scape, with 9 buds – so this one, too, will be watched for another year, but I’ll probably keep it just because it’s already got decent height, a beautiful face, and has opened perfectly.

Which leads me into how so many seedling blossoms don’t. I’ve read that you really need to give them several years, that you shouldn’t go by the first blossom to open, and so on – but some seedlings just have poorly formed flowers, or don’t open completely, or other oddities. Or they’re just plain unattractive. I’ve got one that has never opened a blossom completely; they just get hung up about halfway through the process. It gets another year to improve, but if not by then – into the compost. And another that I was SO excited about last year didn’t even throw up a scape this year – obviously not a vigorous plant at all! The most vigorous seedling so far has multiplied into 10 fans with 2 scapes, and while the flowers are a pretty color, so far they’re all imperfect in some way. I’m giving that one another year, too.

More later as more seedlings open their blossoms.

The Big Fix for the Wet Yard

Our house, lawn, and gardens are situated close to the bottom of a very large hill. In fact, most of our part of town is a series of hills that cascade down to a deep gorge through which the Ashuelot River twists and turns. While it’s lovely and all, it also means that rain and snow – and we normally have a fair amount of each every year – drain downhill and into our yard, creating swampy boggy areas. Even at a time like this, when we’ve been two weeks without any precipitation and suffered such heat, the outer edge of our yard would often be so wet that the mower got stuck from time to time.

Thanks to some wonderful serendipity, our son is a landscaper. On a fiercely hot afternoon last weekend, he offered to remedy the drainage situation and spent several hours expertly operating an excavator, digging and shaping a swale. What’s a swale, you ask? – I had to ask the same question! The best way I can describe it is a long, narrow bermed ditch, designed to slow and capture runoff. Taking the slope of the land into consideration, he built a deeper drain pit at the lower end, with gently angled edges.

The plan is to sow the exposed sides of the swale to clover, rather than let the local weeds totally insinuate themselves. By summer’s end, it should be green again.

Now here’s the part that proves to me that I’ve married the right man: my husband, surveying the nicely finished swale, suggested that the very long lawn edge – probably close to 150 feet long – should be turned into a long border of daylilies. Who am I to argue? My guys are great!

Dog Days

As much as I could rave on about each and every daylily that’s opened so far, what’s uppermost in my mind (and nearly everyone else’s, it seems) is the heat. And the ones that seem to be suffering the most, at least in my immediate purview, are our two Berners.
Bernese Mountain Dogs are incredibly sweet, gentle, wonderful beasts … and definitely built for cold weather. Originating in the Alps, they like nothing better than to roll around in snow; our northern winters don’t faze them a bit. They’ll come up to the field with me on summer mornings, after some encouragement, and seek out a shady spot. But this hot, humid spell is really hard on them, and they just can’t stay out there very long. We don’t have A/C here at home, just a few fans, and during this heat spell Marley and Geneva are slow, panting, nearly immobile after 9 a.m., even in the house. Devoted critters, instead of always seeking out the coolest spot, they rather will stay with me, even if I am in the warmest room. Poor things! And so this is how I rationalized spending a few hours in front of a fan, watching insipid tv this afternoon … it was for the dogs. Of course!

Open Garden Plant Sale Sundays

Way back in the early spring, we looked at our work calendars and at daylily bloom records from the last few years, and decided to open to the daylily public on Sundays in July. We didn't notice that the first Sunday was the Fourth! -- and so while we officially start our season tomorrow, we're not expecting much in the way of traffic. And that's okay; the last-minute scramble is still underway and we still have plenty to do ... finishing some of the bed signs, some of the walkway trimming, some of the cleanup around the greenhouse. The list is long. We don't mind easing our way into this!
Each day, more and more daylily buds are opening ... here are some photos of some of the ones in bloom now, with lots more to come ... top to bottom: Grand Ways, Atlanta Moonlight, Maison Rouge, Shango.

Greens 'n Things

If you’re into kale at all – I mean, even slightly – I can’t recommend Beedy’s Camden highly enough. In the past we’ve grown the Russians, red and white; Lacinato/Dinosaur; Winter curly; others I can’t remember … each of them did well enough. And then we met Beedy’s.

Selected by a farmer in Maine and sold through Fedco, this variety fairly jumps out of the ground and just keeps growing apace all season, pushing out large flat-and-curly leaves that are tender and delicious. Half a dozen seedlings went into the kitchen herb garden for those last-minute additions while cooking; the rest are up in the field with the other crops. Kale can be cut into pieces, tossed in a bag and frozen without blanching for winter soups and stews – easy to do – and you will likely have plenty extra for freezing if you grow this prolific variety.

For some reason, lettuce grows really, really well here; maybe it’s the type of soil we have, or the particulars of this mini-climate, but the heads grow to an enormous size while staying crisp and tasty. If I were into monoculture, this would be a lettuce farm! This spring we’re enjoying Black Seeded Simpson, Buttercrunch, Forellenschluss, Italienischer, Really Red Deer Tongue, and some volunteers from the varieties I let go to seed last year; there are Batavian seedlings waiting for their turn in the field for midsummer eating. Taking a note from my Pilgrim days, onions are planted in amongst the lettuce seedlings right from the start – they don’t compete for the same “air space,” and the lettuce will be gone fairly quickly while the onions take much longer.