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If you are buying previous inroductions, you probably are a collector or breeder looking for something specific to add to your collection or gene pool.Then again, you could be a relative newcomer buying for low prices and excellent value. Even customers who buy the high-priced spread sometimes need advice. One customer called to complain that all her new introductions from me died. All seven of them. After a few questions, she admitted she had planted them just like all her other bulbs: Six inches deep!
Here are some tips useful to beginners and experts alike:
- Improve the soil with organic matter, such as chopped leaves, compost, bark, peat or composted manures
- Add enough lime to raise your soil pH to at least 6.5 before planting. If you have alkaline soil (pH above 7.5), use powdered sulfur or other acid-forming material to lower your pH well below 7 before planting. Wait a few weeks to plant after adding large quantities of any amendment to let the soil recover its balance and to avoid burning your plants.
- Plant the crown, the place where the roots meet the leaves, no more than 1.5 inches below the soil surface. Too-deep planting is probably the most common killer of daylilies.
- Water every four or five days when there's no rain. Water every three days in hot sandy spots.
- Fertilize lightly when planting and two or three times more a year, in spring and in late summer or early fall, with balanced fertilizer or a fertilizer high in nitrogen, if you have plenty of phosporus in the soil.
- Mulch well if you live in the coldest states
- Water is the most important of the above guidelines. More water almost always means better daylilies.
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