DSSEW

Don Coshun comments - What a gorgeous year for the garden! Although the dry year required much watering and the thrips caused some bud fall and lots of tracks on the darker flowers, I found the edges and the bud count to be spectacular. ‘Bitsy’ (Warner 1963) started blooming a week before the preparations for the annual sale and has sent up reblooms ever since. I am hoping for rebloom on others this year. The color in the seedling bed is so very encouraging. This past winter was good to the plants as I have over a dozen of '05 seedlings blooming already (mid July). I appreciate the input on the seedlings by those members who have stopped by and would like many more comments. I have spread a lot of pollen this year and the ‘06 seedlings are now starting to look a little less like grass.

From Gary Raatz we hear - this garden season included the usual challenges of inconsistent rainfall and animal predation. Rabbits, squirrels, woodchucks and deer provided us with numerous adventures. We did have a small problem with bud development on some cultivars. Experts say this is due to a lack of a steady water supply, but I'll sacrifice a few buds here and there in exchange for the generally excellent blooming season we had this year. Linda and I grow over 200 daylily cultivars, 150 hosta cultivars, 100 peony varieties and 2 dozen lilacs. Linda has recently developed an interest in Japanese iris and has already collected 15 cultivars. We've been developing this garden for 8 years and now have over 20 island beds of various sizes that allow me to move daylilies and hostas as they grow and mature under changing light conditions. We enjoy daylilies because they provide color from late May with ‘Elizabeth’ (Norton 1942) to Labor Day with ‘Ruffled Strawberry Parfait’ ( Klehm 1998). Our favorite hybridizer is Bob Ellison of Rockford, IL. He offers both diploids and tetraploids with incredible substance. Some of our Ellison favorites include ‘Tangerine Dancer’, ‘Mr. Thundermaker’, ‘Foxy Babe’ and ‘Blazing Sunset’. Visiting his Rockford garden center during Bloomfest in mid-July is well worth the trip.

                Zannah Crowe offers these comments - With the early warm weather, the daylilies certainly started blooming early, but I was also surprised to see that they seemed to last longer than usual. This truly is a genus that seems to thrive on stress! For "companion plants" I have  become enamored of the white blooming form of Calamintha nepetoides. It lives up to its name "white cloud" by forming an airy 15"-18" mound of tiny white flowers from July though frost. It is a member of the mint family so is unaffected by rabbits in my garden; a huge plus! I use it as my “repeat plant” to tie my beds together visually and am becoming very fond of it. My best daylily performer this year was 'Bubbly' (Joiner 1989), with over 4 weeks of heavy bloom.

                Cathy Lewis reports—I’m having more powdery mildew problems than in past years, and blackspot on my shrub roses has been worse, too. However, my daylilies had a very good year overall. Plants from this year’s sale are doing well and I’m very pleased with my choices. I brought home more plants than I intended, but managed to find places for all of them. I thought I had more misshapen blooms with my lilies than in past years; perhaps because of the unusually warm conditions in early winter? (or May freeze?-Ed)

                Barb Kramer writes - What a summer!  Since there's actually no 'typical' Wisconsin weather, it's hard to say just how the summer compares with other years, but I had fantastic daylily bloom! That's really all that matters isn't it?  And I heard the same from my gardener friends.  Many of the daylilies I bought last year bloomed for the first time this year and that is so exciting.  Going out one day to see the first bloom on a new daylily and compare the flower picture and stats to the one found on the internet is satisfying; to me, anyway.  This year I decided to 'organize' my daylilies.  Most of my gardens have themes, like my 'grass and succulent' bed, my 'yellow hosta' bed, my 'mini hosta' bed, my 'drought tolerant' bed and so on.  And so far my two main daylily beds were just my 'daylily' beds.  I have some here and there in other beds as well but most were concentrated in those two beds.  So I've decided to do a lot of plant moving this fall and have a 'spufo' (my favorite new word, is it in the dictionary yet?) bed and an 'all the other regular kinds of daylilies' bed.  Ok, so no offense to those of you who are not absolutely crazy about spufo's like I am!  Thanks to Bremer and Reed and Stamile and Webster and many others for having some fun with form. (spufo is a short way of saying SPider and Unusual FOrm – Ed.) Also, I want to briefly mention my trip to Minneapolis to attend the National AHS Convention with Jean Palm.  It was my first convention and I absolutely loved it!  It was fun to see some of the hybridizers in person, to get to know some other DSSEW members better, and to visit gardens that I wouldn't otherwise have had access to.  When I came home I copied one of the ideas I saw in one of the gardens on the tour.  They had a 'cat' garden.  Since we have several cats and dogs I made a 'cat and dog' garden.  It turned out quite cute.  The only drawback to the convention was being gone from my own garden for 4 days in July, but it was well worth it.

                From Doris P. Simonson we hear - I feel this summer was a rather eclectic one.  Some plants bloomed ahead of time - others bloomed late - some never came back – and others were extremely aggressive.  I didn't know what to expect so there were many ups and downs! The same was true within the Hemerocallis family, with different cultivars being somewhat out of character as far as blooming time was concerned. However, it was an interesting bloom time and, as usual, I spent too much time in the garden!  After a lo-o-o-ong period of "no rain" and "extreme heat"  with the Waukesha Water Department breathing down my neck making sure I didn't water when I wasn't supposed to, we are now in the "monsoon  season" watching it rain constantly! !Oh well! So—”ta-ta!" to the summer of 2007.

                Duane and Barbara Nickel update us - The beds are expanding and the plants are begging me not to move them again.  Some have been moved three times this year.  The drought and not being a tour garden this summer inspired me to finally redo the gardens.  I’m saying goodbye to older daylilies and new ones from my holding area across town will be coming home.  This has been really hard to do.  If I had the room I’d keep them all. We are saying goodbye to more grass in the front yard.  The new neighbors cut down a large fir tree so we have a lot of sun light from the west in the front yard.  Why devote precious planting space to grass?  A lawn isn’t always necessary.  We are going with more paths with more areas to plant along. Also, we will probably change some grass paths to chips since it’s getting hard to get the mower through. Duane is moving his daylilies home from the holding area also.  It will be easier to dabble in hybridizing if all the plants are in the same garden. The huge maple shading much of our backyard is coming down this fall and this is going to change our afternoon shaded back yard to sun.  More moving is ahead.

                Sue Eggold tells us - Our daylilies did well this summer, but bloomed very early.  Now in August, I don't have even one late one left. The yard looks rather blah. The Rose of Sharon was loaded with blooms, but also early. When the storm hit several weeks ago, two large branches broke off.  That was the last straw!  It was not an attractive shape, but always a great bloomer. Now it's getting the ax!  I will plant another, but it will be a tree form - no more bush form.  A lot of Japanese Beetles ate their fill of my rose bushes.  I searched for them every day and then ground them up in the garbage disposal. Melinda Myers said they are around for about six weeks and I must have killed 30 - 40 of them. I had about 30 flowers on my Easter lilies – just beautiful.  The yard was a bouquet of daylilies in all colors beginning around July 1^st and the oriental lilies were outstanding. My club guest plant ‘Planet Claire’ (Curt Hanson 2001) was a real winner in my garden. The blooms look like a luncheon plate in lemon yellow.  They bloomed one at a time so that I could enjoy each one.

                Harold Steen writes - The Summer 2007 story is typical in that there does not seem to be a typical summer anymore. Many of the plants were off to an early start, probably due to the unusually warm January and, in general, blooming seemed to be about 10 days early. There were some plants that apparently didn’t know when to start since bloom time had no relation to the registered bloom season. Mid season blooming ‘Wild Child’ (Salter 02) is still going in August 20th. Last year, about 15% of my plants did not bloom at all since the buds were killed by the hard May freezes. It was a treat to see them this year. Two garden blooming stars were miniatures this year: ‘Broadway Starfish’ (Stamile G 05), 50 days; and ‘Little Music Maker’ (Stamile G 04) 45 days. ‘Party Pinafore’ (Kirby 99), a beautiful full size flower new to my garden also bloomed 50 days.  The award for garden dominance has to go to ‘All American Chief’ (Sellers 94) which spread its display of large red blooms, as many as a dozen at a time, over 4½ weeks. One of my favorites this summer was an oldie, ‘Wisteria’ (De Kerlegand 91), lovely lavender flowers with both petals and sepals curled back, blooming more than a month. Sun Coleus, ‘Twist and Twirl’ in particular, were great companion plants this year. T & T was bright burgundy, gold and lime green, 24” high and 14” wide. I have used dwarf Shasta Daisies a lot as companion plants in other years, but find I now have to spray them like I spray roses. There is often a fungus that appears in mid-summer quickly killing the plants. The lower leaves turn black first, and then it’s “goodbye daisy”. Something similar happens with Rudbeckia ‘Goldsturm’ when not sprayed.