Bloom Day Post - Juy 10th, 2012

Martagon Lilies

Spiderman Daylily

Early blooming helenium

Turks Cap Lilies

Kisses Like Wine Daylily

Web of Intrigue daylily

Looking Back Best Pics 2012 - Daylily

Since winter still has us in it's grips I've decided to look back on my pictures from 2012 and post some that I deem the best of 2012.  I hope you enjoy!

From July 2012

Daylily 'Swallowtail Kite'

New blooming to my garden this week is the daylily 'Swallowtail Kite'.  I love daylily that have watermark (a zone above the daylily throat that is lighter than the petal's color).  This was has a lavender almost blue colored watermark and a yellow throat.  It's very tall, so if you decide to add this one to your garden pair it with other perennials such as coneflower, phlox, etc.  

What's in Bloom 7/4/2012

First Daylily of the Season

The first daylily of the season has bloomed!  This one is 'Ruby Spider', it's a spider-type daylily.  Spider-type daylilies have petals that are four times longer then they are wide.  

Collecting hosta and daylily seeds

It's a little early to think about collecting hosta and daylily seeds, or so I thought.  One of my hostas already has seedpods that are starting to burst, so I thought I would post on how to collect hosta and daylily seeds.  Neither hostas nor daylily come true from seed, which means that they will not look like the parent plant.  It all depends on how the flowers were pollinated.  In hostas a majority of the seeds will produce a plain green plant, but you never know when you might grow a desirable plant.  I collect seeds and put them in labeled paper envelopes with the name of the plant I collected them from.  Both hosta and daylily seeds need a time of cool dormancy.  So I usually store the seeds in my unheated garaged until January (or later) when I am ready to plant them.

These are seeds pods on a hosta that are not ready for collection yet.  They are still green.

Notice these seed pods are brown and starting to crack open, these seed pods are ready for seed collection.

Close-up of a seed pod that's ready for collection.

These are the hosta seeds inside of the seedpods.

This is a seedpod on a daylily, it is not ripe enough for seed collecting.

This is a ripe seed pod, you can easily shake the seeds out.

Close-up of daylily seed (black one).

These are the bulbils on a tiger lily. 

Not the greatest picture, but I was trying to show the bulbils are ready to pick when you start to notice roots coming off the bulbils.  The small white line coming off the bulbils is a root.