Debra and Vickie - Thank you!

I honestly don't know any hybridizers who grow daylilies in my zone (10a). I think the intense heat and temps play a big part in the issue of keeping them alive for more than a few years. I will say though, that I still have some that have not disappeared. They have yet to become clumps, but they do typically bloom every year. Some are actually registered and name cultivars that I obtained and some are crosses that I purchased as seeds or my own crosses from what I had growing in my garden at the time. I am amazed that they haven't disappeared yet after 5+ years. And they seem to be rust resistant. But there aren't many of them (less than a dozen). I seem to have better luck with miniature blooming daylilies than those beautiful large bloomers.

If anyone grows daylilies in zone 10a, I'd sure love to hear from you!

And in keeping with this thread and my love of Dragonfly Dawn (DD), here is a pedigree chart for 4 children from a DD x DD cross seeds that I managed to get my hands on. (This is a repeat of a chart I posted years ago.):

The blooms were stunning to me at the time and the photos in the chart don't do them justice. DD is still my favorite parent, but it doesn't like Zone 10a, as none of them survived past 3 years.

There have been two daylily hybridizers in the past in or near Miami (currently zone 11a but recently 10b). The more recent one was Kaskel. The other was Jean Wooten. Kaskel registered 77 daylilies, mostly tetraploids. Wooten only registered a handful. Jean Wooten did write several articles about hybridizing in the climate of Southern Florida.
By any chance have you tried growing any of Kaskel's?

Becky, I sent you a treemail.

Maurice - I hadn't heard of Kaskel hybridizer. Do you have a link to Kaskel information? Thanks for sharing that information!

Nan - Thank you for the email alerting me to Maurice's response and also for your info about Kaskel cultivars.

@beckygardener

Kaskel did not register any daylilies after 2004 (a few of his seedlings have been registered by others since then). There are 77 daylilies registered under his name. There may be something about him in the back issues of the Daylily Journal. I know that he made a few posts to the AHS email robin (which still exists) in the late 90s and early 2000s so at least some of his posts would be in their archives. You do have to be a member of the AHS to be a member of the email robin and access the robin archives. He was breeding for rust resistant daylilies. He only hybridized tetraploids.

He was in the process of moving from paper catalogues to online selling in the early 2000s so you can find some of the material from his website at the Wayback Machine. For example at,
https://web.archive.org/web/20...

I once grew "Matthew Kaskel" but it wasn't happy here. I know John Benz used some of Matthew's plants as stock plants, and I know that Matt Meadows and Jamie Gossard still use some of his- although they could be second generation. Matt has a new release this year with Kaskel genetics. The connection might have been through Spacecoast, since the Kinnebrews are in Florida.

I have Kaskel Super Red, hybridized by Kaskel and registered by Linda Pinkham. It is a new plant, but I am eager to see how it does and use it in some crosses. Supposedly it is highly rust-resistant.

I have So Many Stars and it's really pretty. I might have others, I would have to check all my plants, which would be long winded.

Becky, I'm in 9b and on a barrier island. I have had great success keeping evergreen daylilies for decades in my garden. I do grow them in boxes with really good soil. Our beach sand is not their cup of tea. My new box in the front yard is doing very well, even though I just planted it last week.
My only criteria for daylilies is that they are true evergreens to grow here. The front box will probably have some plants that are labeled evergreen, but have a touch of dormancy. They will be the plants that fail!
From my database, I still have five daylilies (out of a total of 48 plants in the garden) that I purchased from November 2008-January 2011.

@beckygardener
I saw some photos of daylilies in gardens in Florida in the Florida regional newsletter. They were grown in boxes that were completely raised off the ground by resting on bricks at the corners. In one garden it was bare soil under the boxes in the other garden it was either landscape fabric or plastic sheeting under the boxes.
Presumably the soil in the boxes would need to be nematode-free and the daylily plants would need to also be nematode free when first planted.

Maurice, our boxes all have landscape fabric under the boxes, and the boxes are sitting on concrete blocks, well above the soil. We never get nematodes in this rich garden soil. I'm a Master Gardener and keep my eyes open.

Arlene - You stated, "From my database, I still have five daylilies (out of a total of 48 plants in the garden) that I purchased from November 2008-January 2011. " That is better than my odds, but I had more plants, including those I grew from seeds. I have one bed where the daylilies in that bed have done well. The bed is in the ground, but I did put tarp down underneath first before adding the soil. The tarp has deteriorated over the years. Oddly, the front of that bed is very shallow soil and the back is deeper. The daylilies in the shallow end have done better and I must happily confess, I do have clumps this year in that section of the bed. I don't know why there is a difference between swallow and deep soil depths.

I do know I have root knot nematodes. I can see the damage they do to plant roots. But I grow a lot of different plants, and not all are native plants. The daylilies are the only plants that seem to perish. My yard looks a bit like a jungle, plants seem to thrive in my yard. But .... it is a mystery to me why that is not the case for daylilies.

I recently acquired & raised a few pet chickens (hens). I have been using their poop around all my flower beds. The plants are huge and seem to really benefit from this. I dilute the poop in a container of water and just pour it around my garden beds. All the nutrients seem to be feeding all the plants pretty well. I wonder if poop repels bad nematodes?

Maurice - I had grown some daylilies in pots and they did pretty well, but the pots were harder to keep watered in the heat of summer in zone 10a. Quick evaporation of the water was an issue. Thank you for that information though. I may have to build some raised beds that are off the ground.

@beckygardener

I can understand that growing daylilies in pots in Florida would have its problems.

Light coloured pots (white) would help with controlling the temperatures and the speed at which water was lost from the pots. Using a double pot system (pot-in-pot) would also help control the temperature of the pots (which contained the soil and daylilies). The larger outer white pot (empty - no soil) would need to have an air gap between it and the inner (white?) pot. The larger the air gap the better, to a limit, since too large an outer pot might allow sunlight to directly hit the surface of the inner pot containing the daylilies. That would be undesirable for keeping temperatures down. I do not know if the outer pots could be large enough to allow the water tray/saucer/etc. to be completely inside it and out of direct sunlight. If the white pots that are available are not large enough then perhaps large enough black pots could be painted white or wrapped with white (or reflective) material of some sort to help reflect light or otherwise reduce their temperature.

Maurice - I have actually done what you suggested. And it does work fairly well. I live in a neighborhood on a quarter acre lot which includes the house in the middle of the lot. I don't have a lot of room for very many decent sized pots within a pot. Space, heat zone, and nematodes are my challenges to growing daylilies. I grow so many other plants that I really thought that daylilies would be just as successful when I first started growing them. After about 3 years, I started to realize how challenging it was to grow them long term. And with none of the local plant nurseries selling any kind of daylily, I started to catch on that daylilies struggle here. But I continue to grow them (mainly seedlings now from seeds) because I do enjoy them, even if for a year or two until they perish. I consider most of them annuals and am happy if I get blooms before they die. They are truly beautiful blooming plants!

I do have another question .... which ploidy typically produces the most seeds from a pod? A dip or a tet?

And does anyone have any diploid parents they recommend to use in crosses?

Oh! And I do have some good news for those with root knot nematode issues like me. Apparently chicken manure and wood ash can help reduce the number of nematodes:
https://apsjournals.apsnet.org...

So .... maybe I will have more luck growing daylilies long term!

beckygardener said:
I do have another question .... which ploidy typically produces the most seeds from a pod? A dip or a tet?

@beckygardener Diploids.

beckygardener said: Oh! And I do have some good news for those with root knot nematode issues like me. Apparently chicken manure and wood ash can help reduce the number of nematodes:
https://apsjournals.apsnet.org...

There is also this research,
Alternative Management Strategies and Impact of the Northern Root-Knot Nematode in Daylily Production

Amanda D. Howland, Emilie Cole, Kristin Poley, and Marisol Quintanilla
Abstract

Bare-root production of Hemerocallis spp., daylily, is of major economic importance to Michigan's ornamental industry, but production of clean nursery material is challenging due to plant-parasitic nematodes. The northern root-knot nematode, Meloidogyne hapla, is the most important perennial ornamental pathogen in northern North America; it causes over 20% yield loss in Hemerocallis spp. production and reduces marketability and distribution. A field trial was established in 2018 to 2020 at a Michigan commercial nursery to determine effective and long-term management strategies to reduce nematode population levels. Eleven treatments were tested: a control, four bio-nematicides, two nematicides, a nematicide root dip, and three compost blends. Soil samples were taken three times per year, along with annual root samples and plant height measurements. Results indicated that TerraClean 5.0 (hydrogen peroxide) and Majestene 304 (Chromobacterium subtsugae) nematicides best controlled M. hapla populations by 49 and 37%, respectively, compared with the control, whereas Indemnify (fluopyram) significantly increased plant biomass and yields by 31%. A greenhouse study was conducted to determine the impact of M. hapla on Hemerocallis spp. production by inoculating daylily with varying nematode inoculation densities. Even at low population levels, plant biomass reductions were observed, and M. hapla was readily able to reproduce on Hemerocallis spp. These experiments highlight the importance of managing M. hapla and provide effective, alternative management methods that can reduce the application of fumigants and prevent yield losses to increase profitability for ornamentals.

Only the abstract is freely available to read but I have requested a copy of the published article from the author(s).

See also https://apsnet.confex.com/apsn...

https://www.floraldaily.com/ar...

https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/...

For those who would like to read the original thesis research, it is available at
https://d.lib.msu.edu/etd/5117...
Chapter three is specifically about daylilies.

admmad,
The report says they kept a biweekly count of "Plant quality parameters, such as plant height (cm), number of eyes, number of flower buds, and number of scapes were taken biweekly."
What are they referring to by the "number of eyes"? I am thinking the crown would be underground.

@Seedfork A quick search of the thesis produced as a first "hit" this,
"After their production cycle in the field, their foliage is cut off and they are machine harvested, with the majority of their roots also removed. Each plant is then split up by dividing its crown into smaller plants called eyes, or clumps of the rhizomes; each eye can be sold as a new daylily plant."

Then this,
"Daylily plants are grown in the field for up to 3 years and then are commercially propagated by dividing the crown, which consists of many individual plants called eyes"

I interpret "eyes" to mean the number of fans.