Well there’s something you don’t see every day. It’s Tuesday, August 13th, and we happened to have a really nice pair of blooms on our Steampunk clump today. For some reason, the blooms were exceptionally rich and vibrant. But one of them took it to the next level, blooming in a polymerous form with 5 petals (and thus, 5 sepals). It was exceptional and striking, to the point that I even broke out a ladder to try to get the ideal photo of it (didn’t really work…but you gotta try).
Well, I (Matt) posted it to our Facebook page, and shared it around, but I also posted it to Garden.org. Well, bringing the story to a close, tonight, this is what I saw on the homepage of the National Gardening Association’s homepage at www.Garden.org…
2023’s summer was simply chaotic in our household, as Matt’s client of 12+ years passed away unexpectedly back in May. As a result, Matt took over his role, and ultimately the team took over the business, moving it into an existing partnership. The result was hundreds of extra hours of work this year. Meanwhile, Matt (and to a lesser extent Ethan) continued to escape into the gardens to photograph and pollinate daylilies!
We started selling seeds a few weeks back, but at this point, it’s time to make a lot of noise as seed sales are in full swing. There are currently over 200 active listings at Daylily.com, with over 1,600 packets of seeds looking for new gardens this season! View the active listings from Duluth Daylily here.
If you prefer to shop on eBay, we also have a limited number of some of the same crosses available there, in hopes of catching the attention of new seed growers. Prices are lower at Daylily.com because the fees are lower than eBay. Shop the eBay listings, if that is your preference!
We haven’t decided whether we’ll restock the “store” here on DuluthDaylily.com this season or not, primarily because nearly everyone wound up buying from Daylily.com’s auctions, and it’s a little bit easier/quicker to list things there, vs. on this website!
Shipping weather has been great, with daytime temps above freezing here, so getting things in the postal system has currently been immediate, without delay. Obviously this mild weather will likely not last all winter, so best to bid early, bid often, and shop now, so your seedling can get as much lead time on spring as possible!
Wishing you all a wonderful holiday season and prosperous new year.
For the past few days we’ve been working tirelessly to get our 2022 seeds posted at Daylily.com. Click Here to see our active listings! Our seller ID there is Mpedersen (Matt Pedersen, I know, so original!)
Most seeds on the Daylily Auction website are in limited supply. There may be only one or two packets of a particular cross, so if you see something you like, best to bid early and bid often, because you may not get another chance at it!
Items in greater supply will be listed here in the online store in the coming days; right now we’re just prioritizing the auction listings.
Simply put, I want to make sure we’re using our own photos when selling our seed, proof that we have the plants we claim we’re using! This first year is a lot of work; basically taking a break from my job of editing and web developing, to do more editing and web developing.
Anyway, the galleries currently include all varieties with names starting with A & B. Click the Daylily Galleries menu item to see the list, and select specific varieties to see all the photos I’ve shared of them. This often includes the blooms that aren’t “at their best”; some are young plants, other times I just want you to see that not everything is pristine all the time.
Daylilies pretty much all look exactly the same when not in bloom, so good record keeping and redundant labeling are essential tools if you want to know what you have!
When it comes time to put your daylily seedlings in the ground, you’re going to need to keep track of them. Generally, you will probably want to rely on more than one kind of label, as well as good record keeping so that if labels are lost or faded you can still figure out what is what.
The small white pots that we grow our daylily seedlings in have the seedling code written on them with a sharpie. In this example, I’m using a specimen of grex #21-106, which can be found on the 2021 Seedling List Lookup page. 21-106 happens to be (Patterns In Time X Blue Wrangler).
The pod parent for 21-106 is Hemerocallis (Daylily) Patterns In Time – image by Musclechic114/Public DomainThe pollen parent for 21-106 is Hemerocallis (Daylily) Blue Wrangler – image by Ina/Public DomainThe pod parent (female plant) is always listed first, as seen in this example for 21-106 (Patterns In Time X Blue Wrangler).
When unpotting, it is really easy to cut this small pot apart and use it as an initial marking tag. You can usually get two or three tags out of one pot, which is good for having duplicates, particularly since sharpie markers tend to fade in the sun, but seem to last a long time when the label is buried.
Here are step-by-step instructions for making quick plant tags out of our pots.
This seedling is already starting to send up its first bloom, so I’m going to pot it larger and help it grow as much as possible to enjoy a quick glimpse at what this new hybrid might look like.It’s really easy to remove the seedling, and your left with the empty pot.Some quick work with the scissors and you have the seedling number on a ready-made label.if you want, a couple more diagonal cuts and you have a nice pointed tip on your new label.Meanwhile, the seedling is going into a larger pot for the time being.And just like that handy label!There’s easily enough blank material to make a couple more labels out of a pot.Two more ready to go in and help me keep track of the seedling.What are the odds that all three labels would become faded or lost?
And there you have it! This isn’t the only way I will mark and track my seedlings, but I found that redundancy is essential when trying to track plants in the garden!
Our goal is to spread an appreciation of the fantastic world of Daylilies (Hemerocallis) with gardeners throughout northern Minnesota. Here in Duluth, it’s rare to see something other than the classic “orange” daylily, or the omnipresent “Stella”. When folks visit our annual plant and garage sale, the daylilies historically have been overlooked, even met with disdain, and that’s because most of the time we basically just had the “classic orange daylily”.
But there are currently 97,196 daylily cultivars (varieties) in the National Gardening Association’s Plant Database, and you might only see TWO of them around town? In 2021 we dedicated new land to particular cultivars, particularly since we ran out of shade for more Hostas! During the winter of 2021/2022, we grew our first hybrid daylilies from seed.
Starting this summer of 2022, we are bringing something new to the Twin Ports region. Our annual multi-family plant and garage sale held in our Woodland, Duluth neighborhood is already increasingly known for our extensive offerings of Hostas and many other perennials, and has become synonymous with the Duluth Hosta Co. and our winter seed offerings. The 2022 sales will now also offer hundreds of daylilies obtained from fellow hobbyists. We’ve stived to obtain varieties that are different than what you’re used to seeing, and should thrive in our northern climate.
We will also be offering hundreds of our own, unique one-of-a-kind hybrids from seeds obtained via hybridizers around the country. You can purchase an unbloomed seedling and, after a year or two, be reworded with the first bloom on a flower that no one else on the planet has! If you came here because you have a “seedling number”, something that looks like 21-112, you can use our online seedling database to find the parentage of the seedling. While some daylily kids may look like their parents or a pretty straightforward blend in between, daylily genetics are all over the map, which means there are many surprises (and admittedly the possibility of disappointment) with a seed-grown hybrid! Perhaps the seedling you buy today will one day be worthy of a name and registration with the American Hemerocallis Society?
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