E-zine Number 3 : July 2001

The Colour Supplement to the 1999-2001 Catalogue

There are 299 colour photographs in this 16 page publication and four pages of descriptions of daylilies which I’m now selling for the first time. There are also 25 of my own cultivars being introduced in the new supplement.

There is a total of 590 colour photographs in the current catalogue and the supplement together. You can still buy the 1992 and 1996 catalogues for $2.00 each (plus $2.00 postage for the two of them) and there are a total of 230 additional photos in them.

Letters from Daylily Lovers

Gary MacDougall e-mailed a large order recently and I had to ring him to check on a few things. He began telling me how well the plants grew and how beautiful they were so I asked him to put it in writing so that my customers could enjoy reading about it.

Gary writes :
 “We have a 4,500 square metre property at Somerset Meadows in Bonogin on the Gold Coast in South East Queensland Australia. Late last year we planted hundreds of daylilies which we purchased from Mountain View Daylily Nursery. Some of the daylilies were potted in 140mm pots but most were bare rooted. We planted about 100 miniatures and the rest were standard size. Generally they are planted in sandy clay. However, when we planted them we incorporated Nutri-tech Solutions products Nutri-Store 180, Huma-tech Liquid Humus and Nutri-life 3/20 in the soil. All these are organic treatments.   As we do not currently live on the property the daylilies have been subject to a fair bit of neglect — lack of water, lots of weed growth, and non- trimming of dead leaves and flowers. We are extremely pleased with the quick rate of establishment of the plants and how quickly they are multiplying and we were surprised at how quickly they flowered. Because they look so lush and healthy now (in July) we know that, when Spring comes, the flowers will be fantastic. Amazingly, they have even grown quite profusely during the start of Winter!  Some are planted beside a little creek which runs through the property and even shortly after they were planted, flood waters rushing through the creek during storms could not dislodge them. The rapidly flowing waters even temporarily covered some of them for a short time. This proves that their root systems must have established themselves extremely quickly. We attribute the success we have had with them to having excellent stock plants and the organic Nutri-Tech Solutions soil amelioration programme."

My Reply :-
Gary -  those potted plants we sold you were really pot-bound, they hadn’t been fertilised for over a year, and were badly in need of a “good home.”
You obviously provided an ideal situation for them and made good use of Nutri-tech Solutions excellent organic products. I’m delighted to hear you saw no need to use any artificial fertilisers in your soils. It's interesting to note that the daylilies came through scorching summer temperatures in January without any losses. Sometimes losses can happen when they are planted so late in the year but you obviously provided a very healthy soil for them to grow in. This in turn gave the plants the health and strength to continue growing strongly. By using the Nutri-tech products you have encouraged the growth of billions of beneficial organisms in your soil and this has helped your plants grow so well. You didn’t mention whether you spread a mulch around your plants. I recommend that you do this as soon as the days (and the soil) become warmer. This will benefit the fungi and bacteria you’ve added to the soil, keep the soil cool in summer, and keep the weeds away. Lucerne hay is great to use but any type of hay is good. But I have to warn you — now that you’ve added the organic products to the soil, the hay won’t last long! The microbes will quickly break it down and at the same time every worm in the neighbourhood will be heading for your garden!

ORGANIC PRODUCT DESCRIPTIONS

Nutri-Store 180 - Nutri Tech Solutions have developed a process of converting coal to organic carbon and added this to fish protein, cow manure, soft rock phosphate and a vitamin and mineral formula. Nutri-store 180 is one of the important ingredients in our fertiliser blend.
Huma-tech Liquid Humus - This product is a microbial stimulant and soil conditioner. It can almost be called a “fast-food” for the soil micro-organisms — they love it!
Nutri-Life 4/20 - Nutri-tech Solutions do not supply 3/20, just the 4/20. It is a potent blend of 20 species of soil-friendly bacteria and 4 predatory fungi which devour and out-compete the pathogens in the soil. One of these predatory fungal species Trichoderma, is renowned for its capacity to control several soil diseases including Fusarium, Pythium, Rhizoctonia, Armillaria and Phytophthora. (These are the fungal pathogens which have been found in the crowns of rotting daylilies). We brew up the 4/20 microbe mix and add it to our soil through our irrigation system.

 Daylily Notes from New York:

A person in a daylily group on the internet wrote:- “Why do I never hear mention of 'Miracle Grow' ? I have used it for years on my 'other plants' and thought it was the best all around fertilizer for whatever people grow. My theory has been for years to use Miracle Grow like a vitamin…”

Melanie Vassalo from New York replies -

 “In my opinion, yes, using 'Miracle Grow' could be considered like taking a vitamin. But think of it this way, how often are you taking that vitamin? Now think of it in terms of children. If I said that I give my girls a vitamin once a month like clockwork and can't understand why they aren't thriving on a diet of bread and water, would you think I was crazy? Now what if I told you I made sure that my girls had a rounded diet of grains, dairy products, fruit, vegetables, proteins and everything else they needed every single day. How important do you think that once a month vitamin would be?
Bringing this back to the garden level, I amend my soil with composted manure on a regular basis. It's amended before any plant is planted and I top-dress with more composted manure at least twice a year. If a plant can take up the nutrients it needs every single day, suddenly the monthly vitamin is not very important.
On the other hand, my container plants do get Miracle Grow on a weekly basis and they look wonderful. Potting soil is not nutritious even with the Osmocote that I incorporate and any amendments therein leach out quickly due to constant watering.”

My comments -   I asked Melanie’s permission to quote her reply to the question about Miracle Grow. Her explanation gives support to those gardeners who believe in growing daylilies organically. She doesn’t use any commercial artificial fertilisers to keep her daylilies growing well - just composted manures are used. When this is broken down by the soil micro-organisms it becomes the nutrients for the plants. She has never lost any daylilies to “crown rot” - a disease that seems to be prevalent amongst growers who believe in using artificial fertilisers to boost their plants along.
It is a well-known fact that plants which have been given too much “fast food" are prone to disease and insect attack. Melanie is a very keen gardener and daylily collector and grows a diverse range of perennials throughout her garden.

Potted Daylilies - I think Miracle Grow is a similar product to Thrive - an artificial fertiliser which is dissolved in water and applied to the soil close to the plants. I don’t recommend its use on plants in the garden, but I agree it could provide nutrition to potted plants. Many daylily nurserymen use 6 to 9 month Osmocote in their potting mixes and this gives the plant lots of soluble “fast food”. This is very different from the nutritious “slow food” that plants receive from the micro-organisms when they are grown in healthy soil.

I often hear of the problems that people experience with potted daylilies after they are planted in the garden. Their plants become less vigorous and diminish in size and vigour, and in some cases they die. Before I sold the potted daylilies to Gary, I told him he had to remove 75% of the potting mix, remove half the foliage, and to make sure he watered them at least every three days.

Whenever you buy potted daylilies it is strongly recommended that you remove as much of the potting mix as you can before planting them. The potting mix IS NOT SOIL — it is composted pine bark and sand. It does not support any beneficial microbes — in fact it is more likely to be a perfect environment for fungal and bacterial pathogens.

When you put potted plants in the ground — whether they be daylilies, shrubs, annuals or perennials you must remember to water them every day otherwise the plant will take all the moisture out of the mix. After a fortnight some of the roots could have grown out into the soil, and the plant may then have a reasonable chance of surviving.

Diversity :- I sometimes wonder if it is the lack of diversity in many daylily gardens that is the cause of some of the problems I hear about ? During my visits to gardens I often see lots of daylilies and not very much else!  By planting a diversity of perennials, shrubs and bulbs throughout a garden you are providing host plants for predatory insects which feed on aphids, thrips and other insects. Diversity in the soil is important too. A diversity of roots from the different perennials and shrubs (and weeds!) can also lead to a diversity of beneficial and predatory microbes. I’m certain that far healthier plants will grow in this kind of environment than in a mono-culture situation. In nature you rarely see dozens of the same plant species growing in the one area. It’s a matter which has had me concerned for many years because this is exactly what I’m doing — growing hectares of daylilies and nothing else. But, up until now, we have had no insect or disease problems. If any of the following insects become a problem — aphids, thrips or red spider mite — I will not be spraying chemicals to control them. There are predatory insects which can be bought and these will control these pests.

Daylily Name Changes

If you breed a daylily and you wish to officially name it, the American Hemerocallis Society is the organisation which accepts (or rejects) that name (for a fee of $AU40.00 currently.)  Because I have not been registering my daylilies since 1994, it was to be expected that someone would register a daylily with the AHS with the same name as one of my unregistered cultivars. So two of mine now have name changes:-

JOLLY SWAGMAN now becomes
MALENY JOLLY SWAGMAN
KIWI MAGIC now becomes
MALENY KIWI MAGIC

The new daylilies in my Supplement have not been registered with the AHS. I have frequently mentioned in my newsletters about the non-registration of my cultivars and I know that 99.95% of my clients are not the slightest bit concerned about it. To sell a daylily with a registered name does not make it any better than one with a nursery name. The daylilies I sell to my customers are all very good performers in my nursery and I would expect them to do as well in your garden as they do in mine (providing you grow them organically and your temperature range is similar to ours — from light frosts to 38° C).

 WHAT DO WORMS EAT ??

I mentioned in the last newsletter that everybody -including myself - thought that worms ate organic matter and broke it down into humus. According to my supplier of worm castings, this is wrong — worms digest the remains of soil microbes, the “bad” microbes, tiny seeds, and some of the products created by microbes. When you put your kitchen scraps into your garden or worm farm, it is the microbes which break it down and then the worms soon follow.

I also asked in the last newsletter — how do the worm farmers manage to get all those worms out of the big boxes when they are full of castings, and into the adjacent boxes where the worms will create more castings for him to sell? When he sells that beautiful vermi-compost he doesn’t want to lose his precious worms, does he?

To get the worms to move voluntarily, he stops feeding the microbes in the box which is full of castings, and he puts green matter, kitchen scraps and manure in the adjacent box. During the night the worms wriggle over to the next box and the whole process begins all over again. So simple, isn’t it? One of my clients told me she puts old manure into nursery pots and places them on top of the vermi-compost and during the night the worms wriggle their way through the drainage holes at the bottom of the pot and get into the manure.

Vermi-compost, or worm castings, are one of the best additives you can put in your soil. They contains billions of beneficial microbes and attract the native worms by the thousands.
Don’t buy a few thousand composting worms for your garden because those worms will not live long in that environment unless you feed them lots of manure and green matter.

 HOW TO PLANT A GARDEN !
FOR THE GARDEN OF YOUR DAILY LIVING:

PLANT THREE ROWS OF PEAS:

1. Peace of mind
2. Peace of heart
3. Peace of soul

PLANT FOUR ROWS OF SQUASH:

1. Squash gossip
2. Squash indifference
3. Squash grumbling
4. Squash selfishness

PLANT FOUR ROWS OF LETTUCE:

1. Lettuce be faithful
2. Lettuce be kind
3. Lettuce be patient
4. Lettuce really love one another

NO GARDEN SHOULD BE WITHOUT TURNIPS:

1. Turnip for meetings
2. Turnip for service
3. Turnip to help one another

TO CONCLUDE OUR GARDEN WE MUST HAVE THYME:

1. Thyme for each other
2. Thyme for family
3. Thyme for friends

WATER FREELY WITH PATIENCE
AND CULTIVATE WITH LOVE.
THERE IS MUCH FRUIT IN YOUR GARDEN
BECAUSE YOU REAP WHAT YOU SOW !

THE AMERICAN HEMEROCALLIS SOCIETY
Annual Awards and Honours — 2000

STOUT MEDAL
(Highest award given to a cultivar by the AHS for distinction, beauty, & performance over a wide geographic area)

Winner Elizabeth Salter *
(J. Salter)
Runner-up Dragon’s Eye
(E. Salter)

AWARDS OF MERIT (Cultivars receiving votes from at least half the regions in the USA)
Bill Norris 215 votes *
Betty Warren Woods 198 *
Daring Dilemma 162 *
El Desperado 138 *
Mask of Time 110
Primal Scream 109 *
Nosferatu 95 *
Ruffled Perfection 96 *
Dena Marie 97 *
Yabba Dabba Doo 80 *
Chris Salter 80 *

These Cultivars also received many votes —
Dragon King (78) * Jedi Dot Pierce (78) * Something Wonderful (71) * Emerald Splendor (67)* Hush Little Baby (63)* Missouri Memories *

HONOURABLE MENTION
(Cultivars which have been registered for 3 or more years) Ed Brown 280 votes *
David Kirchhoff 139 *
Larry Grace 121 *
Wisest of Wizards 97 *
Cameroons 91 *
First Knight 82 *
Senegal 80 *
Mort’s Masterpiece 79 *
America’s Most Wanted 78 *

SPECIAL AWARDS

Lennington All-American Award(voted by the AHS Board of Directors, based on outstanding performance in different regions)
Jason Salter *
(E. Salter)

Best Small Flower
Elegant Candy
(P. Stamile)

Best Double
King Kahuna *
(C. Crochet)

Best Unusual Form
Jan’s Twister *
(J. Joiner)

Best Eyed Cultivar
Canadian Border Patrol *
(J. Salter)

Best Spider
Marked by Lydia
(J. Temple)

Best Miniature
Mary Ethel Andersen *
(E. Salter)

* These cultivars are available from Mountain View Daylily Nursery