Daylilies in extreme dry season

This season for gardening is extremely hard for us, in Lithuania. We have early, but cold spring. Everything emerged from ground, but started to grow normally just in June. Other bad thing is rain. We doesn't have it for a long time. Garden was dry like desert. Even I watered it with hose, but still hot days dry everything in seconds. But still I have some nice blooms to show for you all.

Before I start to show these blooms, I enjoy and breed, I want to apologize for no posts for a long time. University just kept me busy. It was harder than anything I can imagine. So took my all time. During free time I enjoy gardening, water it and weed.

Also, had some big plans for my garden as experimental field for landscape architecture studies. In study projects I used some great literature books with Piet Oudolf designed gardens and public places with tons of grasses and other herbaceous plants. So I wanted to express what is in my head with several Dutch wave beds. I ordered 1029 plants to make it come true. And planted them all in two evenings after studies by my own. It was fun. Get to know numbers and understand how they look later. As it is dry, I've lost some of these cute little plants, but that is natural for any planting. Lost is usual for me. Unusual soil, weather surprises make it

harder for my budget.

 You might think it is planted too close. I knew, that some not survive, also have plans to redone big flower bed. Already started move some lawn to make it bigger. I noticed, that this new garden is no longer that big, because I still have a lot of plants to put in right place, but space is limited. Hard to imagine how fast I filled my new garden spaces. Soon I start to change something and make it plant heaven as I had in past garden. With small place and tons of plants.

And start with daylilies. As topic of today. And my beginning of story starts from spring, when I moved ALL DAYLILIES TO NEW GARDEN. I am still counting how much I moved, planted. Still mapping daylily beds and counting. I will inform numbers in autumn (if not forgot). In following photo you can see almost all daylily beds, all daylily zone in my long garden. Maybe from photo you can notice, that my garden is slim and long. That is serious task for landscape architecture not to look so long. So I am experimenting with various combinations of planting, and creating areas.

 

And now, glorious show of colors, shapes and forms. You can notice my new gift from parents (phone with extreme good camera), so all photos look ten times better than before. So enjoy.

[All names are under each photo. Seedlings are mine, if not, I noted from where I got seeds]

Texas Sunlight x Chief Four Fingers - Seeds from AHS International Seed Bank

 

Forestlake Ragamuffin x Spacecoast Devil's Disciple - Seeds from AHS International Seed Bank

 

Leslie Renee-1 x Italian Kaleidoscope - Seeds from Claudia Conway

 

Moonshiner x Simple Okulfrapa - Seeds from Izidor Golob

 

Lee Reinke x Jerry's Whirligig - Seeds from AHS International Seed Bank

 

Dear Moon x New Style

 

Dear Moon x New Style

 

Dear Moon x Night Beacon

 

Mitsu x Dear Moon

 

Dear Moon x Night Beacon

 

Magic of Oz seedling from AHS International Seed Bank

 

Bičių Duonelė  100% double (Gift from my first teacher of breeding and first mentor - Jonas Auksuolis Liutkevičius)

 

Mitsu x Noght Beacon

 

Mitsu x Night Beacon

 

Mitsu x Night Beacon

 

Fiji-2 × Italian Kaleidoscope - Seeds from Claudia Conway

 

'Asterisk' (Lambert 1985)

 

'Wild One' (Wild 1973)

 

Dear Moon x New Style

 

Mitsu x New Style

 

Night Beacon x Dj Leo

 

Night Beacon x Dj Leo

Dear Moon x Night Beacon

 

Dear Moon x Night Beacon

 

Unknown red daylily

 

'Watchyl Dancing Spider' (Kreger 1994)

 

'Telltale Heart' (Doorakian 2006) - parent for almost all DIPLOID daylily crosses. That is powerful parent for me this season.

 

Mitsu x Night Beacon

 

Mitsu x New Style

 

Border Music x It's a Miracle - Seeds from Claudia Conway

 

Night Beacon x Dj Leo - Poly for over 75% of blooms

 

Karamelė (J. A. Liutkevičius) - Lithuanian daylily. Sadly, not registered.

That is all for this time. I do like writing about my garden, because someone care about this and that is so great. Blog is to keep my diary, but also to show what my life is. I hope next posts will amaze you, because I am going to visit STATES. Yes, America, here I come.

Daylily moving

Dear readers of my blog.

 

I want to apology for my big gap of new posts. But I try to catch right way and get on track. Month ago I had a very nice time moving my daylilies. Grandmother take care of them for few years, and they grow nice. Even I lost few varieties, dose of seedlings, but natural selection working just fine.

So lets start my illustrated blog about big moving.

 

 Everything starts in my new garden. I corrected concept of my garden. As I mentioned all the time and cheering that I will have unique daylily circle. But I flush that idea down, because soil is too poor for my daylilies. So I had to move all irises (1st. photo - right corner) to that circle in back. Yes, spring is not the best time to move them. But I had another serious reason. Soil is too acid for irises. So they get rot, leaf damages and look not very nice. So emergency. Rescued irises doing just fine. I moved them very carefully.

 After moving irises I started to work with soil. Tilled with cultivator, raked for all weed roots and started to make beds. Added a lot of limestone to make soil not that acid. Even daylilies like it, but on surface I do not need acid soil.
Just take a look of soil color. I've just imagined, that this kind soil existing, but in my garden. Wow. It is fertile and very easy to work. Weed garden is fun job knowing, that even seriously invasive weeds is easy to pull.

 And there is shot from grandmother garden. Yes, a lot's of weeds, that overwinter. But they are not interesting for me. Daylilies that grow here. This is just one part with 4 beds in row. In grandmother's garden I had 3 spaces for daylilies. This one, vegetable garden part and in fields close to rock hill. So enough space to grow. Also her garden is located in Northern part of Lithuania. So good way to test hardiness of daylilies here.

 But OK, enough taking photos and let's start working. First daylily bed, that we started to dig. Me, mom and dad started from seedling's bed, which is very special for me. There grown a lot of nice seedlings from AHS, William Marchant and my own. With great help from my parents we done it very fast.

 Packing daylilies this way isn't the best choice, but I have nothing else. Boxes for big quantities work just perfect, but some others with one fan, one clump or few clumps like in this photo fit to these bags and then paced in bigger boxes, which was too heavy to take out.

 Sister capture great photo of mom and me holding one of John Kulpa seedlings. It is big joy to see very strong and healthy fans of each seedling.

 And this is serious mess in trailer, that we rent. But this is organized chaos. I do not lost any label, daylily or get mixed with something else. It is very nice.

 That is how it looks. Try to cover all commercials on trailer, but it was too hard. So pick other corner and capture it. It is real big and and fit a lot of plants.

 Road was long, but they made it. Place them in garage for cooling. Weather was just perfect for planting. Sun, almost no wind made planting very fast. But still that quantity can't be planted once. So garage is cool enough to rest before being planted in new soil.

 Planting was very fun. Fast and easy. Working a little faster and harder I left only with T-Shirts. But later get cooler and take more clothes. You can see ground with a little white spots. That is limestone dusts. During planting I mixed it with soil. I did it before, but extra of it added before planting.

 So very funny seedlings from one cross by Brian Bender. One cross of Itsy Bitsy Spider x Dragon Dreams give me over 50 good seedlings and this kind growth of first year's old seedling is not the only one. A lot of twins, and others with new fans from one to 4 like this. Hope they do fine and keep on growing and showing great performance this year and for the rest time before being selected.

 So, all daylilies was planted in day and half. Watered and captured in my photos. I can imagine how this will look in July, when all starts to bloom. Very nice.

 In late morning next day I try for better picture.

And other side. There is a lot of seedlings from last year. They was sown in long row and not planted individually all year. So this year was rescued and planted this way.
 And what about today? Same. Just more green. Weeds started to grow and we working with that at the moment. But I will show pictures of this field more and more later this year. I have already saw few scapes, so happy dance and great time to wait for blooms.
Thank you for reading and following my blog. It is big honor for me.