More Shade House

Sharon Price wrote that she would like to see the shade house that i have been talking about. In another month i will have the green house poles up and after we get a good frost i will put on the plastic but for now we have blessed shade for our daylilies.The interior of the greenhouse is 20 wide and 24 long. The shade cloth is 22 x 20 i think. i used the metal T posts to tie the ringlets on the shade cloth to the T posts. After stretching it as best i could there was a big sag in the middle of the cloth. I took some 1 1/2inch pvc pipe about 10ft long and put a T on the end of the pipe and propped up the cloth in 2 places. Looks like a big tent. I then hammered in 2 more T posts in the walkways so i could wire the pvc poles to them so the wind would not make the pvc fall down and break scapes.

Here are 4 pictures i took this morning and in the last 2 pictures you can see Peppermint Delight blooming and Aramis reblooming in the other picture. You can also see the seed pods that are growing under the cloth. It was definitely worth the effort. Also if you will click on the pictures they will enlarge so you can see them better. Jim Elliott

Shade House

Well i made it back. Back from poor pitiful me idea. Just seemed i was pouring my soul into this blog trying to help someone start out right with daylilies with good info and there was never (very little) response. Maybe it was the heat from summer. I may not blog everyday but i will try to blog once a week.

Well you remember we put some shade cloth over an area we had planned on using for a greenhouse. I wasnt getting any pods before that. Well we have well over 150 pods tet and dip. We have been collecting seeds for about a week. I have collected about 40 pods so far.

Now we are getting rebloom under the shade cloth from dips and tets that had not rebloomed in the past in the open garden. Now we have had temps above 100 for the past 3 weeks and no rain. But i do water every other day in this area and it still gets hot. So yesterday Jack Carpenters Peppermint Delight had a bloom open on a rebloom scape and here it is taken thursday at 630 pm. thats right late in the afternoon and still looks good. The petal was broken because my dog thought it was something to eat and knocked it out of my hand. The petals were still firm and colors not faded. I am a firm believer in using shade cloth for hybridizing now.

Jim Elliott

Walter Kennedy

This is one of those flowers that will stop you in your tracks. Explodes in red color. Base color is between dark pink and red but the eye is a dark fire engine red. As you can see the eye pattern comes way out on the petals. 6 inch flower and big strong scapes. Whats not to like. Pat Stamile took Jack Carpenters Peppermint Delight, converted the dip and introed a lot of big eyed flowers from Peppermint Delight. I cant wait till Pat is back releasing introes again. I have been talking via emails to him and he is looking at his first seedling bloom this summer. I think he is getting excited again. Thats a Good Thing!! Stay cool and drink lots of water this summer. It has rained most of the day here and temperature is at 70 degrees at 5pm.. Do you think i set many pods today? Jim Elliott

New Blues

I have bought some new plants to breed with hoping to get a better blue color in the eyes of our tet seedlings. The chalky lavender eyes are nice but i am ready for some blue jean colored blues. Here are 2 new plants with more blue in the eyes. The double picture is from Guy Pierce of Floyd Cove named Which Way. It is in the 4 1/2 inch range and is really a pretty flower that has an outer band outside the blue eye.

The single bloom picture is a new spring intro from Floyd Cove named Dragonfly Blues. Karen Pierce sent this to me this spring as a gift plant with my order. I really like this plant as the base color of the flower is more white and the blue jean blue eye really stands out. The eye shape is triangular which is different. I have been using this pollen and setting seeds outside in this heat. So the pollen must be pretty hot (active). I even have 2 pods using this pollen on Carpenters Palace Garden Beauty. What shade of blue will these babies take?

I counted seed pods yesterday to see how good the shade cloth is working in this heat spell we are having. Not quite 2 weeks it has been up and i have 85 tet pods and 70 dip pods. I didnt count pollenated blooms of the past 3 days because you cant tell as the seed isnt swelling yet or the bloom hasnt dropped. I do know i would not have set very many pods without the shade cloth. For those of us that cant afford a greenhouse this is the next best thing to use for hybridizing. Jim Elliott

Changing Patterns

Good day to all. It is blistering hot here in central Arkansas. I would not want to walk across the street barefoot like when i was a kid. I think it would peel the hide off the bottom of your feet. Thank God for giving me the correct mind to put up that shade cloth over the hybridizing area. Lots of tet seed pods are showing as each day goes by. Lots of dip seed pods also.

Ok. Today we are talking about how much the eye pattern changes as the bloom cycle goes on and the temps get hotter. Even if 2 blooms are on the same scape and open on the same day they may have a different look. Todays bloom is Screen Pattern by Pat Stamile. The bloom on the top was open this morning. See how much different it is from the first bloom on the bottom. I have been seeing it happen with gold edges in past years, the edge gets bigger as the heat increases. Well the same seems to be true of these pattern eyes. Even my blue eyed tets are that way. They are blue jean blue now but when they first started blooming they were more purple.

Have a Great Day and drink lots of water. If you must be outside work in the shade. Pray for your neighbor and lets not forget the kids in harms way in our military. Jim Elliott

Shade Cloth Working

The flower picture is of Crazy Ivan. The color contrast will just stop all your movement. The black in the eye bleeds red out of the edges and the base color is like buttered popcorn. It is a big 6 inches and a tet.

A couple of blogs ago i was telling you that i was hoping this shade cloth would produce more seed pods because the high temps had started plants aborting seed pods, just made me want to cry. It has been about 4 days since we put the shade cloth over the hybridizing beds and i could see yesterday that several old blooms that hadnt dropped were starting to swell with a pod. This afternoon we had some storms roll thru with some good winds that blew off those old blooms and revealed i had been right. I do have tet seed pods and i feel very good about the rest of the bloom season. Of course i have dips out there also and they are setting pods too.

It has been a busy week here trying to get the yard pretty for some clubs to come visit and buy seedlings if they chose to. I can now take this and buy more compost and fertilizer for the new beds the plug tray seedlings will go into. Its Hot out there so drink lots of water and stop periodically to cool off. Superman has left this yard and left me to handle the chores. Have a great week. Also you can take your mouse and click on any picture to enlarge it and hit your back button to go back to the blog page. This works on my blog or Lee Pickles blog or any blog that you are on, just click it to get a bigger picture. Jim Elliott

High Intake Equals High Performance

Isnt it great that all across this great land we all are either expecting blooms real soon or the bloom season is winding down. Either way i hope you meet your expectations with your Daylilies. This plant we love and baby so much has a very big appetite. Is it already there in the beds or did you forget again to redo that bed. When you planted that bed did you add all kinds of nutrients for the plants diet or did you just add a little fertilizer and sometimes water.

Look at it this way, like you were getting at your table for breakfast eack day and then running a marathon once a week. Which diet will give you the energy to last the whole race. Ham and eggs diet or plain corn flakes and skim milk. If it isnt in your flower beds then dont blame it on the hybridizer when the blooms are small and 4 buds. Daylilies have a big appetite. When the plants dont set seed pods then its my fault because i didnt cool them enough to set pods. You can look at past posts on what we put in our beds and it will last for 2 years.

The flower in this blog is Jamacan Rita and is about $30 double fan according to my Eureka. The first time this spring she bloomed there were 3 flowers open on 2 scapes. Now this is a WOW flower. I had never heard of it before someone sent it to me as a gift plant this spring. Thank You.

The other pictures came from my seedling beds that i planted last October from my plug trays. As you can see these seedlings are very happy. They are 4 and 5 fans to a lot of the seedlings. When they bloom next summer i wont have to wait very long before i can intro these babies. This to me is Performance. Many years ago Jack Carpenter gave me his list of what he puts in his beds. But now in February Mark Carpenter applies Chicken Manure as a top dressing with a spreader right out of the chicken house. Thats why plants from the Lily Farm are so well grown, lots of nutrients in the beds.

The shade cloth i put over my breeding beds a few days ago seem to be working. I have not seen a burnt flower or any wilting blooms. When i water at sun down the blooms look great for such a hot day. The pollenated blooms havent fell off yet so i am hoping i have some pods there. Drink lots of water and have a great weekend. Jim Elliott

Shade Cloth

Well summer is here in central Arkansas with a vengence. The past 3 days it has been in the 100 range. We had a club here last saturday and the humidity was 85% plus 100 degrees at 2 pm and we all melted. The flowers in the feild after lunch looked like they were scorched from the hot sun.

I have a green house area that i had put all my plants i wanted to breed with in this area 20 x 24 ft.. I havent been setting any seed pods the past few days and the plants have been melting. I had some shade cloth in the barn for the past few years and decided to try and put it up over the green house area. My wife and i did this yesterday afternoon. I tied off the corners and put in a couple pvc poles in the middle to hold up the middle. I came out at 630am today and started hybridizing and it felt cooler under the 60% shade cloth. i got home this afternoon at about 6pm and went to see what the plants looked like and i was amazed. Out of about 40 blooms, not one bloom was melted or even burnt. They looked good. I know it will help set me more pods now.

The flower is Stamiles Tri Color and a tet. I have seen it bloom several times this summer and today it was a double. As you can see in the first picture there is that extra petaloid sticking out there. Remember i told not so long ago that you could breed doubles with a flower that does this from time to time. Well today here is Tri Color as a full double. Just Amazing. In the old Stamile website Pat doesnt mention that this plant will double. So for those breeding doubles heres one more for you to breed with. Jim Elliott

Bigger Eyes on Diploids

Good day to all, i hope this Memorial Day finds you at peace with oneself. In other words i hope you have a no trouble kinda day. Yall know my first love is dips and more people than i can count feel the same way. We love the big ruffled selfs(solid color) and people ask "whats new and whats comming in the dips? Are the dips done?" No way. My last post i showed you a 6 inch Red dip we will be breeding with trying to get a good line of reds with great branching and good color. Lots of branching and bud count.

Now i am looking into breeding bigger eyes on big flowers. Dont you hate to get a 6 inch flower with an eye that is 1/4th inch in depth. Thats just terrible for an eye. Everyone has them. I want eyes that from the throat to the outside edge of the eye is 2 inches wide. Now those are Betty Davis eyes. So we are going to breed dips in the 8 inch range that have eye patterns and solid eyes that will come close to filling up the petal with color. I have seen Pat Stamiles big eyes on tets but why arent there any on dips?

In the picture is a big 7 1/2 inch dip seedling numbered d1810. The cross is Connie Cant Have It X Cosmic Kalidescope. This flower should breed red eyes, kalidescope pattern eyes and black eyes that i love. We are going to use this seedlings pollen to breed every large eyed dip in the garden and see where the seedlings take us. Just something different than what is there now.

Jim Elliott

Holly Moelly

I have been wishing for a red dip to buy so i could get some pollen. Went out today and there she was, a 6 inch red ruffled dip seedling blooming her first time in all her glory. 22 Buds and 3 way branching. When you cant buy one breed your own. Oh yes i am tickled. This seedling is out of Russell Southall by Dr Elliott. I have posted on our blog and emails i have said that Russel Southall was a good parent. What do you think. Have a Great 3 day weekend and slow down and enjoy life. Jim Elliott

Patterned Eyed Seedling

Good evening to All and i hope you are getting ready for a family weekend. Be Careful and watch those kids so they dont get too much sun. I went out into the seedlings this morning and had about 40 blooms open, but i saw this bloom across a couple rows i knew it was special. It is a tet but it is very unique. I was aiming for a white to cream colored base flower with a double edge. The cross was Boundless Beauty X Mardi Gras Ball. There is no patterned eye in either parent. But sometimes by Gods Grace we get an even bigger and better gift than we ever expected. You cant out give the giver. I gave it a garden name of Splash. My friend that is an art teacher calls this eye pattern Scrunch when painting. Where you kinda dry brush the paint and comes and goes. Yes i got a little excited and put this pollen on about 5 flowers that were blooming in my hybridizing area. I also had a big dip with a broken eye pattern bloomed today but i will save that picture for another day. Today was Splash day. Splash is about 6 inches and has 12 buds but it is a tet. Jim Elliott

Purdy Good Stuff

Its unreal how much longer my right arm is than my left. Could it be from patting myself on the back so much? Just kidding. But we did get some much needed rain yesterday afternoon and through the nite. This morning when i looked out i saw this 6 inch red seedling looking back at me. Funny how the good looking seedlings seem to look toward the house for our attention. With the rain in my rain gauge we got 4 and 3/4 inches since yesterday afternoon till this morning. These 2 seedlings looked really good to me, so i thought i would share. I think the red seedling has 24 buds.

Counting buds on a scape. I have been counting buds for a long time. Usually there will be 4 buds at the end of a lateral branch. Now if that lateral is split at the end then you will have 8 buds. If the lateral is split you will have 2 ends of 4 buds so that makes 8 buds. If you have 2 laterals (branches) then you should have 16 buds if both laterals are split. Same goes for top branching (terminal Y) at the end of each stem there should be 4 buds, so on a terminal Y there are 2 ending stems equals 8 buds right? What about terminal W. There are 3 ends, so 3 X 4 equal 12 on top. Every once in a great while and end will have 3 buds and the other side will have one bud. When your scapes are getting close to blooming go out and count the buds.

Thats my thought for the day, even though you may have never heard about counting buds before. My goal on our blog is to have good information about daylilies and showing a few nice blooms along the way.

Both seedlings are diploids. The red is 6 inch and the purple is about 5 1/2 inch. If you will notice the purple is a bi-tone meaning sepals are a lighter color than the petals. A reverse bi-tone is when sepals are darker than petals. Thank God that the World didnt end this morning at 6am like the false prophet said it would. If you have given your heart to Jesus Christ then you have nothing to worry about, because when that day comes Jesus will welcome you to Heaven with open arms like he did Stephen. Pray for those that cant help themselves. Jim Elliott

Good Pollen, Bad Pollen

This past week here in central Arkansas this past week we have had much cooler than normal temps.. In the mornings we have been in the lower 40s. But now the temps have warmed to above 60 this morning. Daylily flowers dont fully open good until morning temps are above 60 degrees 3 mornings in a row, 2 petals will be normal and the third will be curled up on the edges like a bad hair day. Best part is, is that the pollen can still be good and that messed up bloom will set a seed pod if pollenated usually.

Our friends Pat and Patrica Larsen came over the other afternoon and Pat couldnt believe i already had set seed pods on some plants. We are talking about the Fla. plants i bought back in late February. These plants are still on Fla. bloom time even though they are in Arkansas. Thats why they are blooming here now. After being in the ground over the winter they will set their bloom for Arkansas time and roots will be established and have better plant habit meaning more buds and better scapes.

Now to the pollen. I have always told people that Chunky Pollen was not good or Viable as some say. I think it is my fault that the pollen on Stamiles intro Screen Pattern is chunky. I may have gotten the partially open bloom wet last evening as i was watering in a hurry before church. If you will click on the picture(the one lowest) it will enlarge it and on the lower left petal you can see Strips of pollen that has fallen off the anther. Looks like a yellow line.

Now the upper picture is Stamiles intro Bit of Blue. Look at the pollen on the anthers it is nice and fluffy and good color so it is good pollen to use. Chunky pollen is no good and moisture is usually the guilty party.

We have a few seedlings beginning to open but the cold nights have made some ugly petals. Scapes are everywhere and if the weather keeps warming we should have lots of bloom by the end of next week. Looks like peak will be a week early this year. I hope the temps stay down so we can set lots of seed pods. Have a Blessed Day and Pray for others. Jim Elliott

Those Mysterious Eyes

Well it was bound to happen. The first flower to open and it was Stamiles plant Mysterious Eyes. I had the first bloom last week and i did set pollen on it. Ao today i had 2 blooms open from Mysterious Eyes and i did dab a little bit of pollen from Texas Blue Eyes on them. You can see in one picture there is a seed pod set. So now the bloom season is set in motion and the hybridizing will begin. Remember in past blogs about how to save and freeze pollen, well the pollen i used and set the seed pod with was frozen pollen taken last year.

I dont self blooms. That means i dont use the pollen from a flower to pollenate itself. Like a bug would do if it were to crawl around on the pollen and then crawl out to the end of the pistil. People use to think that when you would self pollenate that the seedlings would be going back to the flowers in its past. I may try some this year just to see if that theory holds up or not. We finished an outside job yesterday and went and visited with a gardening friend of our Sheila Nash. She has a lot of shade so she can have a big variety of plants. Yes she has a beautiful yard and home. Thanks Sheila. Maybe we will finish out the day planting the last of our daylily seed crop from last summer. Jim Elliott

Fire Ants

First i must tell you i am not an expert about Fire Ants but i have been told by others what they do and it works in my yard. The mounds get bigger as the days go by and can get bigger than a foot tall. I have seen some on a Regional Tour and the home owners never knew what they were. A week ago there was no sign of any ant work in my yard. I have been told after a rain the Fire Ants get active. Late last week when the yard started to dry i started to see all these mounds start up. The way they make their tunnels you can spray with gas and light them up and after the fire goes out they just move over a little. You must kill them with a BAIT so that All the ants and the Queen will die.

I have seen yard granules that says they kill the Fire Ants, maybe so but the Queen stays in the mound and dont come out, so how do you kill her. She has to eat. Bait her. The product i use i get at a commercial nursery and cost about $22.00 for a one pound canister that has a shaker top. I will sprinkle about a teaspoons worth on and around the mound and in about 24 hours there is no activity at the mound and no holes present, looks like a cave in sort of. So dont play with these Fire Ants get rid of them and if you have them most likely your neighbor does too, feed his also. They will bite you and are very aggressive in their attack.

Blooms season looks to be early this year by at least a week. Hope you find the perfect bloom you want and have a great day. Jim Elliott

Good Snake-Bad Snake

Can you imagine opening your back door and a 4ft Water Moccasin Snake falls into the house. Tighten up time for sure!! It happened to me last night. The dogs were barking so i opened the side door and smelled skunk. I shut the door and got my 22 rifle and put on my headlight and headed for the back door, the one we use most of the time. I didnt turn on the porch light so when i opened the door i saw something move really close so i stepped back and this 4 ft snake fell off my door knob and landed on the floor of the house. Thankfully i didnt panic and i shot the snake where it layed. Glad i didnt have a shotgun!!

This morning i was in the garden looking at the scapes comming out and almost stepped on this King Snake. He is all speckled in white dots so please dont kill a King Snake as they eat poisonous snakes and mice. If it has a pattern on its back kill it.

With all the high water around here and all over Arkansas the snakes are moving around and it is mating season.

Had my first bloom yesterday Mysterious Eyes of Stamile and yes i did put some pollen on it. Plants are getting waist high and new scapes are above the folage. Beautiful day ahead. Lets all pray for those needing lifted up. Jim Elliott

Double Rainbow

Great Day to All. It is foggy this morning here in central Arkansas. The rains have stopped and the rivers keep comming up. Lots of flooding along the Mississippi River and will keep getting higher till the middle of next week. Lets give prayer to those people and the families that lost loved ones last week with all the storms. We tend to forget about people in need until it reaches our families. Please have sympathy for others starting today and include them in your prayers and lets dont forget our people in other countries in harms way.

Kathy and i were finally cutting grass and working in the yard last tuesday. I looked north of our house and i could see a big cloud with rain comming out of it headed right for us. It came a shower and as the shower was about to quit i looked up and there was a double rainbow. just beautiful and right over our place. It reminded us we have a lot to be thankful for.

I have had a few emails recently from people that read our blog and want to buy some of our daylilies. Or do we just grow them? We do sell plants to visitors who come to the garden. We sell seedlings and named daylilies. We will start next spring releasing our own introductions. We have been lining out plants this early spring but the rains started comming and the ground is just soaked. No way to make more beds, it is tough just pulling some grass. For the last couple years since building a new house we have been trying to hybridize, plant seeds and make new beds for the seedlings and line out some of our clumps of our seedlings. Plus we work for a living full time. If you noticed our web site is not up to date with last years seedling pictures and the new seedlings are starting to scape up. Never enough time. Not complaining as we have our electricity on and we are all healthy so life is really good with our family. Pray for others you dont know and maybe God will Bless you too. Jim Elliott

Power Outage

Good Day to All, we have had some terrible stormy weather here in central Arkansas since monday. Tornados have touched down in several towns and peoples lives have been taken and 1/3rd of our state has been without electricity since monday afternoon. During this time we have had over 8 inches of rain. We all take the good weather for granted but it could be you or your neighbors next time.

We have living by candle light the past 2 nites and playing dominoes and cards to pass the time. I began to worry about our freezers today when i was told we may be without electricity for 10 more days. My neighbor has a bigtime welding shop and since he is not able to work he let me borrow one of his portable welders that just happens to have a big generator on it. It produces 10,000 watts of power. It runs on diesel fuel. Now you see why we are told to love our neighbors!! Now i can play on the computer, have a refrigerator and have lights. We have city water so we are kinda back to normal. Pray for those that need lifting up and love your neighbor some how. Jim Elliott

Crank It Up-Almost Showtime

Another long cold winter has come and gone Thank The Lord!! The past week here in central Arkansas has been really wet. We have had so many storm fronts come thru our area and since yesterday we have gotten 2 1/2 inches of rain. We had a lot of rain and the garden is soaked. Cant work in the garden moving plants or anything. Last week was a long work week so we had decided to take today off before the rain fell. So i thought i would blog some.

The first picture is of a very good grass killer that you can use in your flower garden or veggie garden. This product will not kill daylilies or veggies Except Corn. Corn is a grass family and Will Kill Corn. But i have used it around peas, okra, tomatoes and watermelons. It WILL NOT KILL WEEDS OR BROADLEAF WEEDS, ONLY GRASS. We have lots of bermuda grass and crab grass here in Arkansas. One tablespoon herbicide to a gallon of water with a few drops of dish liquid for a surfactant(sticker) in a small pump up sprayer and you are ready. As with any herbicide plants(grass) should be dry before spraying. It will stay on the plant much better. Also it will not wash off(rain) after it has dried on the plant. We want to have the grass in a growing mood. That is dont spay when you havent had a rain in 2 months in the middle of July. If it is dry in your area then water the area you intend to spray a few days in a row to get the grass in a growing mood.

I was checking the rain gauge this morning and walked back thru the daylilies and found these 3 scapes. OH BOY!! This was the only plant i saw scapes on but i didnt tear up the daylilies looking for scapes either. It wasnt even flagged either.

These next 2 pictures are some diploid seedlings from a little old lady friend of mine. Her name is Sandy Nall, she has been our friend for about 15 years. Just kidding about the little old lady part. She is in the prime of life and full of energy like a little bumble bee. She came to our garden about 15 years ago and bought some plants. Who knows these may be down from those plants. I wished anyway. Sandy is becoming well know for her patterned eyed dips. She wont even share pollen with me, imagine that. She lives in the Texarkana area, maybe the Arkansas side. She has been asked to speak at the National in Louisiana about her garden and hybridizing so we have something to really look forward to.Thanks Sandy!!

Since we arent working today we may plant some daylily seeds we have left. Maybe 1500 need to be planted in plug trays. Bloom season is not for off, are you ready?Jim Elliott

Rot and Spring Sickness

Here in Arkansas we , as far as i know, dont have Spring Sickness. My friend Sara in Ohio asked me a couple weeks ago if we got it here? Maybe because we have breaks in the cold weather with warm fronts all winter.

We here in the South have Rot. Where you can have a row of different cultivers and one rots. What causes that, i am not sure. Now i will give you my thoughts on this and i hope i will get some response from some of you. I have had daylilies start to yellow in the summer when temps get hot and usually when there is not a lot of rain. I will put a handful of pelletized lime all around the plant close to the plant and water it in for a couple days and a big part of the time the plant send out new growth out from under the crown, but i will lose the yellowing plant. I think it is a PH problem that those little parasites(bulb mites) eat holes all in the crown and bacteria gets in and kills the plant. Now i think some plants are more prone to rot than others. But i still think it can be averted with a little change in the PH. I have heard some folks talk of pouring on a bleach solution to kill the rot. Maybe it does but when you add the bleach solution have you changed the PH?

Heres what i am asking those that are seeing or those that do get Spring Sickness, take an area of your garden and take pictures before and after of the area where you have in the past had Spring Sickness and ADD some pelletized lime to this area and dont be stingy with it. In the next 30 days let me hear from you on the difference if there is one. My email is

woostergrdn@windstream.net Lets stop this problem before it gets started.

The above tet seedling is from Shores of Time X Forestlake Ragmuffin. As the temperatures get hotter the teeth get bigger and the gold edge gets wider. Was i lucky, sometimes it just happens to turn out right. I have seen teeth on Shores of Time in the past but i never persuded it because i wasnt into the teeth plants so i had to try it just once and it worked. This was a Short Cross because so few seeds were produced from this crossing of these 2 plants. Now a Long Cross is when i will load up on the pod parent with pods from the same pollen and have maybe 25 seeds or more.

Here is an example of a Long Cross. I have a purple dip seedling numbered UP-4, short scape but still above the folage, very good branching. This is the pod parent. Now for the pollen parent i use a creamy white named Carribean Whipped Cream from Dave Talbot. The clump of UP-4 had about 30 pods on it from CWC and my wife was getting tired of using the same pollen and wanted to change, thank goodness she didnt change pollen parents. I wanted to get a pure purple 7 inch seedling from the cross. I did get the big purple seedling. But it was lost and never made it to the new house and garden. There was a period of a couple years where we built the new house and was making gardens for the plants. We have purples but not that big one we wanted but i am still trying. I will say in that purple and cream cross i got so many eyed seedlings and lots of pinks and pinks with eyes. We just never know when we spread that pollen what we will get. Its all about hopes and dreams. Now that would be a good name!! Hopes and Dreams!! Dont forget to try the pelletized lime. Jim Elliott

Tools For Easier Gardening

As i was writting yesterdays blog i was thinking about the one i was writting and another blog subject on tools. Now that the gardening season is here i have all these thoughts running through my little brain. Thats why i started this blog was to give information about raising daylilies the right way. I am on a daylily robin and sometimes people give out bad info with little or no concern about who it will hurt. I can assure you this, what i write on this blog has been tried and done here in our garden. You can use it or lose it but it works for me.

One man or woman with the right tools can do a lot of work with half the effort and Lord knows my back is not as strong as it used to be. I had my friend come over this afternoon with his tractor and 6 foot wide tiller. This pto tiller can make beds look like smooth butter. In about 15 minutes he made me ten 6 ft wide beds. Now that the ground is broke all i need to do is add the composted pine bark, alfalfa pellets, cottonseed meal, pelletized lime and fertilizer till it all in and add the plants.

After planting i top dress with more slow release (9 month) fertilizer. Then i add a granular herbicide that is treated with Treflan. Some folks use PREEN(very costly). These granules i use come in a 15 pound bag for about $18.00. I get it at my Farmers Coop. It is put out by Hi-Yeild company so it should be available everywhere. As soon as you get thru planting your plants sprinkle liberally on the ground and water it in. When you water it in it produces a chemical barrier on top of the ground and when seeds germinate they are poisoned when they hit the surface. Then add mulch. DO NOT PUT IT ON YOUR VEGGIE GARDEN AND PLANT SEEDS, THEY WONT COME UP. My sister in law got confused last year and tried this and couldnt figure out why her veggie seeds didnt come up. Heres Your Sign!!

A good wheel barrow is handy in and out of the garden. I have always used a single front wheel barrow and last summer i saw this vinyl bucket wheel barrow that had 2 front wheels. I can load this baby down and move it with one hand and drink tea with the other. I fill it up with pine needles and can mulch for a long way down the rows. Also moving plants around the garden it is very handy. Cost is about $115, worth every dollar. I promise.

I saw my first scape today on Mysterious Eyes, yes it is a tet and please forgive me. I do love the dips but the broken patterns on the tets really get my little brain to spinning. This plant is still on Fla. time bloom wise. Bear with me while i explain. When the bloom season arrives here in first wk of June the temps are hot usually over 95 and seed set is tough for the tets. So heres what i do. I try to get my tets (when i buy them) from Fla. to be here or shipped mid March. I plant in the garden and baby them and sometime cover on frosty nites to try and get them some roots going. Now the plants think they are still in Fla at least the bloom set does. So i have had Mysterious Eyes in the ground almost a month and here comes a scape. By the end of April i will be setting seed on Mysterious Eyes. Why? Because it is so much cooler this time of year than when they bloom in June. When temps are 80 degrees tets will set seed easy. Above 90 degrees things get tough. Why do people have green houses? To get plants to bloom earlier than normal while it is cool outside. This aint Rocket Science. If i lived in Ohio i would buy my plants and have delivered in March, pot them up and put them under grow lights and outside on warm days then set seed pods when they bloomed first of May. Plant later in the ground after harvesting seed pods, then sell on the Lily Auction in the Fall. That should work like a charm. See what happens when you let me talk and wander. Thanks for listening. Jim Elliott