"If you can kill a Daylily . . .you should
give up gardening "!!!

Do you remember this headline that caught your eye in the garden magazine advertisements?  Unfortunately some gardeners did just that—kill their daylily or kill some of the ones they later ordered. So, how does this happen when this  perennial is supposed to as tough as old boots?  The feedback that I have received from some of these people indicate the following things might have happened.

Over-watering

One caller who received an order during hot weather rang and said that 7 out of 9 daylilies had died. Under my guarantee I’m obliged to replace the plants . . . which I’m quite happy to do. But, on questioning the person I find that:-

1. The instruction to pot them up and place in a shady spot was NOT followed, AND

2. The daylilies were watered every couple of days.

When a daylily is dug up, it loses all its tiny hair roots and when you plant it, whether it be two days or two weeks after I’ve sent it, it takes about a week to ten days for the plant to grow new hair roots back on some of the big roots or out of the crown. If you overwater this plant and there are no hair roots to take in the moisture, you could drown it!   If the days are extremely hot then you could be cooking it as well as drowning it!  It’s hard to believe that water can be so bad for your plants, isn’t it?

It can also be very bad for your soil too. The soil micro-organisms need air just as you do, the plants’ roots need air as well, so if you overwater you could end up with some very sick plants. 

Beware of Bought Soil

Some gardeners think that their soil is just too awful to grow the lovely daylilies they are going to buy. So they buy some top-soil from the local garden centre or landscaping supplies. This could be a recipe for disaster—as some people have unfortunately found out. 

Unless introduced soil is tested, there is no way you could possibly know what’s in it (some toxic matter?), where it has come from, what its pH is (acid or alkaline), or what was growing in it before (if anything).   In my opinion you should never trust a supplier of soil when they say it is excellent top soil.  I’ve seen and heard about too many gardens that have been ruined by the addition of so-called “top soil.”   How would you like to see just about every plant in a new garden eventually perish because the imported soil had a pH of 9 (very alkaline !!)?

Instead of bringing in new soil, I believe you are better off trying to manage with what you’ve got. If you can’t make your own compost, get some from a reputable supplier and mix it into the top 10cm of your soil, plant your daylilies in that and then mulch with hay, old leaves or old grass clippings. In a  few months the new roots will make their way through this and into your soil and sub soil and grow very well. In my opinion your soil will have more worms and beneficial soil micro-organism in it than any introduced soil.

If you have to bring in soil, it is best to add compost and manure to it and then let it settle down for three to six months. Then, instead of planting your expensive daylilies,  plant some annuals first and see how they perform.

If you just have to grow your lovely new daylilies now, then pot them up in some good potting mix and only fertilise with liquid fish and seaweed.

Let me tell you about an experiment I carried out 20 years ago when I lived in Yarraman. I  placed (not planted) some daylilies on top of some clay that had come out of a well which had been dug 20 years before. It was so bad even the weeds wouldn’t grow very well in it!. I placed the crown on the surface and held the plant in place with 150mm of peanut shell. When I came back from holidays 6 weeks later, I was amazed at the growth - they had grown so well I couldn’t even pull them out of the ground! 

The Unseen Helpers in our Soils

One of the most important components of our soils are the micro-organisms that live in the top 10cm. I suppose it is because you can’t see them that they have never been of concern to many gardeners and farmers.

Ponder on this—the population of the world is about 6 billion. In a handful of healthy soil you could be holding 6 billion of these unseen helpers!  In an unhealthy soil there may only be a small fraction of this number.  There are many different kinds of soil organisms in the soil and they each carry out a wide range of processes that are very important for soil health and fertility, so it is vitally important that we should take good care of them. They are easily destroyed by rotary hoeing and using weedicides,insecticides, and chemical fertilisers.

I’m not a qualified soil scientist by any means but I have been growing vegetables and flowers organically for over 50 years and I think I have learned something about caring for the soil. I have used this knowledge to grow big healthy daylilies.  A healthy soil means healthy plants. 

During the last couple of years I’ve read a lot about life in the soil, soil diseases and fertilisers, and now I believe I have a reasonable understanding of those subjects. I’d like to know more, but there are just not enough hours in the day.

If you have inadvertently been using overdoses of chemical fertilisers on your daylilies believing they are good for your plants, please consider this - many of the beneficial microbes in the soil that live in, on, and around the roots, and which are responsible for feeding the plant, will die. And when that happens, the bad ones will invade the roots. These don’t help to feed the plant—they can actually destroy the plant.

In the areas where daylilies come under lots of stress from summer temperatures it is possible that the plant, weakened by the absence of the beneficial microbes and the presence of the bad microbes, will die. Daylily specialists call this “crown rot” - I call it simply death. A plant can also come under stress if an over-zealous daylily breeder decides to use it as a parent plant in their breeding programme and sets lots of seed pods on it.

So, the next time you think about feeding your daylilies, think about feeding the soil, not the daylilies. In other words, feed the microbes.

The food that microbes like best are natural foods like blood and bone, animal manures, worm castings, compost, fish and seaweed products, and mulch. 
 

 Information on the subject of life in the soil 

“Life in the Soil”  I have copies of this booklet put out by the Adelaide University which explains what I have written in much more detail. The cost is $5 plus $1.50 postage plus GST.

For more information about soil and soil microbes you could visit their web site at :-      www.waite.adelaide.edu.au/school

 Nutri-tech Solutions have an excellent web-site on the Internet which gives a lot of practical advice to farmers and horticulturalists about care of the soil and fertilising programs Visit them at  www.nutri-tech.com.au There is a lot of information to read, but just one page I recommend you access is SPEECHES. Then go to SUSTAINABLE HERBICIDING.

All my fertilisers are supplied by this company which is located at  
PO Box 238,  Eumundi.  Qld 4562.   Ph 07 5449 1837

www.soilfoodweb.com is another excellent web site to visit to read about microbes, chemical fertilisers, sustainable farming and horticulture.

The Delightful, Delicious Daylily

Have you tried eating any part of your daylilies yet? One of my American friends sent me a book by Peter Gail and I’m sure he won’t mind me sharing some of this information with you.

Asians have been eating the buds and flowers for thousands of years. Dr Darrell Apps, a prominent daylily breeder in the USA, visited Korea about 10 years ago and he found a wide variety of food products made from daylilies in a shopping centre in Seoul. He also found that daylilies were so popular as food with the locals on a small island off the Korean coast that not a flower was to be found anywhere except right along the coastal strip. When he asked why those on the shoreline were spared, he was told that the beach was still covered with land mines from the war and it was too dangerous to collect there !

The islanders told him that they dig up the fresh roots and eat them like asparagus in spring, and then eat the buds and flowers later in the season.

Warning - if you want to try raw or cooked daylily parts, eat very sparingly for the first three days until your digestive system gets used to them.

Recipes for Buds and Flowers

Flowers and buds, because they are plentiful and disposable, can be used from both the old species and the new hybrids. They have as much Vitamin C as orange juice, as much protein as spinach, and more Vitamin A than beans.   Because the buds are so prolific, picking some for dinner a day or so before they open into full bloom has little effect on the floral display.  They may also be harvested while in full bloom, or after the blossoms are spent. It is often the spent blooms, picked the day after flowering, that are used to thicken soups and stews.

They can also be frozen for use in the off season. Blanch the buds for 3 minutes, chill in cold water, drain well, and pack in freezer bags.

Rather than take up space in this newsletter, if anyone would like to see a few of the recipes in this book, please send a self addressed envelope and I will photocopy a few for you try.