Daylilies just might be my favorite flowers. Although my "favorite" is always shifting, my eyes always seem to go first to the daylilies in gardening magazines, catalogs and gardens I pass by.
As well as being beautiful, daylilies are virtually trouble-free, they multiply easily, and you can even toss the buds into a salad or stir-fry as a tasty novelty. Although unusual fare in the United States, daylilies are grown as food in China. You can harvest tightly closed buds and then steam and serve them with butter or toss them in a stir fry. The taste is similar to asparagus.
Daylilies are adaptable perennials with graceful, grasslike leaves and trumpet-like flowers in cream, lavender, yellow, orange, apricot, red, pink or mahogany. Thousands of varieties have been developed over the years so that a floral display from spring to frost is easily possible.
A new daylily for 2007 is Daylily "Lavender Vista," named as a winner by All-American Daylilies. It has vigorous, handsome foliage and profuse, clear lavender blooms that harmonize with pink, lavender and purple companion plants. Most lavender and pink daylilies require a trade-off between bloom beauty, foliage quality and performance. They say this one has it all.
In the landscape, daylilies are good as specimen plants and they're fantastic in borders and mass plantings, either alone or mixed with other perennials. Daylilies tolerate many conditions, but they prefer moist, well-drained soil and full sun, with late afternoon shade in hot summer areas like ours. They'll grow in the shade, but won't bloom as prolifically. The pink and light shades perform better in shade than the darker ones, which is good, because they also stand out better in the shade.
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They'll also grow in containers that are 18 inches in diameter and 16 inches deep.
Use an all-purpose fertilizer in early spring, mulch to conserve moisture, and remove flower stems that have finished blooming. Seed pods form if old flowers aren't deadheaded. Viable seed is possible, although the outcome could be a surprise.
Daylilies should be divided every three to five years to sustain bloom performance. Each flower stalk signifies two plants the next year, so theoretically a plant with five stalks would produce 10 plants. Divide in early spring when plants emerge from the soil or after blooming is over.
Daylilies have few problems. Brown leaf tips and dead leaves in summer after blooming are normal, but they can be removed to improve appearance.
Other occasional problems include flower thrips and bacterial leaf spot; but problems are uncommon, except for occasional browsing by deer.
Coming this week
This Saturday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. join the Medford Garden Club at its annual Fall Plant and Baked Goods Sale. It's held at the Red Cross building on Hawthorne Street across from Hawthorne Park.
Sams Valley gardener Joyce Schillen is author of "The Growing Season," a book on organic gardening. Her e-mail address is joyceschillen@msn.com.
