Tag: Precipitation

The Sun, and the Rain, and the Daylily Roots

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When it comes to places to live, I stay on the sunny side.  This place west of the Divide and east of the desert is not the habitat of daylilies.  They are go-getters, though.  I have only lost one or two of all those that I put in last year.  Some act pretty shocked for a bit.  Like, hey, we aren’t in Georgia anymore, Toto.   So, below is my city’s annual precipitation from city-data.com – we are a couple standard deviations below the mean.

And, below are the sunshine days.  Here, we are close to a couple standard deviations above the mean.  Desert daylilies.

The downside of this climate, along with the very base ph, clay soil, is that it is nothing like the natural daylily habitat.  It is trial and error.  And some stuff you don’t get to see the results from for a year.  And, so, today I finished putting my mulch concoction on my main flower garden cultivators.  We will see if this helps.  Not that I did poorly this year, but Stephanie Returns didn’t return.  In fact, she only had one scape.  She is not the only one who is below her mean.  So, let’s hope this mulching is more than just a load of BS.

A few blooms to go with the calluses, sunburn, and bug bites.  Two of my last three Pizza Crust buds:

 

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Pizza Crust – Photo by Colorado Kid Daylilies – C. Hartt

 

And, my Stellas.  Yeez, I wish those gals could help with yard work.

 

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Yella Stella – Photo by Colorado Kid Daylilies – C. Hartt

 

 

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Golden Stella – Photo by Colorado Kid Daylilies – C. Hartt

 

PS – Heirloom Heaven is close – and has another brand new scape.  Hopefully, the mulching won’t hurt these little buds.  I think Red Hot Returns is very close, too.  Tomorrow ????

 

 

Jewels of the Garden

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With the light of day, two jewels glimmered in my garden.  One is my old favorite, Ruby Spider.  Ruby is one of the oldest of my daylily collection.  I have had her close to a decade. She was added to fill a planter box that hides my drip system controls.  I used ornamental grass the first couple years, but it always died over the winter.  So, why not daylilies?  This one is still in the same planter (although divisions are now in the main garden) with Return a Smile and Just Plum Happy.  Ruby’s bloom is so big and bright that it almost looks fake to me.  I know daylily season has started when this one opens its first bloom.

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Ruby Spider – Photo by Colorado Kid Daylilies (C. Hartt)

The other jewel in bloom today is a new daylily called Hopi Jewel.  My thanks to Blue Ridge Daylilies for picking up my Southwest name theme and sending this as a gift plant.  It’s in with my new Ned Roberts garden, as are a select few other aptly named non-Neds.

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Hopi Jewel – Photo by Colorado Kid Daylilies (C. Hartt)

I must be taken with Hopi Jewel, because I took a lot of photos of her.  It is a nice shape and color combination.  And, maybe it is just fun to see another new face in my new garden.  It took me days to clear the rocks, dig out some of the hard clay desert soil (we call it adobe soil), and fill it in with topsoil and compost. And, now it is home to over 50 new daylilies, mostly my Southwest named Neds.  It is nice, though, to have a few with rounder shapes.

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Hopi Jewel – Photo by Colorado Kid Daylilies (C. Hartt)

I keep wondering if the daylilies will spread to take over or if they will stay in their current space.  The desert has the sun these guys love, but the soil is hard clay and the rain virtually non-existent.  It’s not Asia.  It’s not even Georgia, where many of these plants came from.  According to climatemps.com, Georgia gets about 5 times as much precipitation.  That’s about 25 more gallons per square foot.  One good thing about my Neds is that they were hybridized in New Mexico and Colorado.  Still, they do so much better in bagged soil and added water crystals.

I am at a clinical conference out-of-town during the day tomorrow.  I am unsure if anything else is on the verge of a bloom, but I am going to do my best to go out and check before I leave . . . sometime between 5 and 6 AM.  Unlike my lilies, I do not bloom that early!