Pacific Moisture Impact on Daylilies: Winter Watering Tips

June 28, 2024Leave a comment

Pacific Moisture, Winter Watering, Rearranging Daylilies

More Pacific moisture today on the Colorado Plateau in Montrose, CO. It’s an unusual amount of moisture for us so far this summer. I have a feeling it will be too little too late to increase my daylily scape production. That winter watering matters when we don’t get much precipitation. Next year, I am going to put a reminder in my phone every 2 weeks starting in February to find a warm day to winter water. Lightbulb: When there is no ice build-up on my front porch in the winter, there isn’t enough moisture for the daylilies during these months.

The day started off warm and sunny, so I decided to slip away and buy the daylily that I passed up the other day (Collier) because one of my pots needed more daylily. Once I got home, I wrestled the crabgrass out of my beloved Canyon Colors daylily pot and was left with 4 scrawny fans. That is why I got Collier. The colors are fairly close, so I hope they each stand out – but I won’t get any blooms from Canyon Colors this year in the pot – fortunately, I have it in another area and it has scapes.

Then, I moved stuff around. I rescued Just Plumb Happy from the border garden and put her in a pot. She is also very scrawny and won’t bloom this year. I divided my Kwanso (ditch lily) and put some of it in my little front corner garden. Now, that plant is supposed to be slightly invasive (unlike its hybridized daylily offspring) but the high desert is no tropical ditch. She won’t bloom in the pot. I also put a couple fans in my native plant garden. Another day, another experiment. If she becomes invasive, I’ll regret what I did today.

Today’s First Blooms of the Season

I had a lot of first blooms of the season today. I’ll post my reel with all the names below. Pandora’s Box was added just a couple days ago. I have almost bought this daylily online so many times! I also want to mention All American Chief as being a favorite spider daylily today.

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A post shared by Cathy Hartt (@artfromthehartt)

Etsy Shop Daylily Art Sale

This is a friendly reminder about my “Until the Last Daylily Blooms” daylily art sale. How about these beautiful fun-shaped flat cards? These make great thank-you notes! Click here or on the photo to go to the listing.

And, I also have several houseplants on sale. The Tiger Kitten begonias are so pretty and hardy. Very easy care. Click here or on the photo to go to the listing.

If you need a small planter, I have a bunch! How about this cute red, white, and blue VW-type hippy bus for fun 4th of July decor? Click here or on the picture to go to the listing (email me if you like this specific bus because I am still in process with listing it.)

Orange

July 29, 2020Leave a comment

My daylily counts are dropping into the teens. It’s OK, because I get kinda burned out with the camera this time of year. At peak, the battery needs to be recharged twice a week.

I hit 130 different cultivaters for the year today with one of my most orange daylilies of the whole bunch. The orange is so deep and so saturated – it looks like my mural paint that is deep orange with a little yellow stirred in that shows up here and there. I do not know for sure which daylily this is because I put in in with the landscaping before I was paying much attention to names. Someone on a daylily page said it looked like Orange Vols – and it does, so I am going with that name.

Unbloomed scapes on not-yet-bloomed cultivators are down to a handful. Maybe 5 or 6. I might get an August scape or two – although often I don’t. That puts us at about 80%. Not low 90s like after the rainy spring last year, but not the 60’s I got before the pots and drip system. Speaking of pots, I have some nice ones for the buried Southwest garden in my Target online cart waiting for payday. I think if I do 20 a month – August, Sept, Oct – that is 60. I have 75 in that garden – some still need to be dug out of the mud, clay and roots, too – takes time. Probably 20 or so left to dig up that aren’t in cheep pots. I could leave them for spring.

Fall chores take over my brain. Soon, I trade my camera for a shovel.

The Company They Keep!

July 23, 2019July 23, 2019Leave a comment

Sorting photos of daylilies . . . People ask me how I keep them straight. Well, I don’t always but I generally do OK because I have some systems to help. First, I have a garden map that I created a couple years ago. It is awesome, it has circles for each daylily in my Southwest Garden with the color of each daylily. And, they have letters/numbers. You can look up the letter/number and see the daylily name with a photo.

The other system is metal markers that have paint pen on them. Want to know a little secret – if you spray them with engine spray after you paint the name on it stays on for years!!!

So, if one system fails, I have the other. As I go through old photos, though, there is a system that works even if it has been a while since you took the photo. Well, look at the company it keeps. I look for landscaping or other plants. I look for other daylilies – what is the backdrop. Usually, I can figure it out. I did make a couple mistakes on Treasure of the Southwest (confused with Soco Gap) that I need to go back and fix.

It feels good to be sort of caught up. But, I realize how different this year is as far as photography. Previous years, I took my phone photos to post on Facebook or if I didn’t have time to download from the camera. I used the camera to get multiple shots of each bloom – especially new blooms and last blooms. This year, both the cell and camera only have one photo of each cultivator/day except in a few cases. That means if the daylily was blooming during my trip, I may only have a photo or two of it for the whole year – half a dozen max.

Perhaps I can enjoy snapping a few more photos now that the trips are done and I have my photosystem for the year up and running. I had 65 total, today. The peak is still with us. Anyway – not quite so many Premiers today. Here they are: