I have suggestions for rebloom in the north.

If you like smaller blooms, most of Martin Kamensky's (from Michigan) rebloom. You can see some of his at www.midaylilysociety.com the Southern Michigan Daylily Society website.

Ginny Pearce of Michigan, her hybridizing objective is to create very hardy, robust, and northern reblooming tetraploid daylilies with large flowers of great color, substance, and form displayed as a minimum of 20 buds per well-branched scape. She strives for overall plant performance to ensure a beautiful garden presence as well as valuable hybridizing genetics.
http://www.gardenpathperennial... ... I am probably creating more competition for myself, but she is ISIS on the auction.

Quite a few of Judy Davisson's introductions have rebloom power for me in zone 5. You probably all know that she is a Michigan transplant to NC.

Martin K recommended "Little Rosy Cloud" and "Frequent Flyer" to me, and both have dependable rebloom in my zone 5 garden. "little Rosy Cloud" is hard as nails with fantastic banching. Rebloom scapes are taller and I think have more branches than first scapes. Hard frost in Fall is the only thing that stops it.

My first registration "Woof Returns" can send up 3 sets of scapes. www.kathysearthlyarts.com Not cutting edge, but that's quite a feat in the thumb of Michigan. ;)

The Benefits of Alfalfa and Greensand .............

http://www.kathysearthlyarts.c...

Seedfork,

Nitrogen would be likely to be the most important to add in most soils.

When I decided to test high nitrogen on daylilies I also remembered that high nitrogen is supposed to produce leaves rather than flowers on many ornamentals.

Then I checked the actual research.

For most plant species the plant must be mature or adult before it can bloom. That is usually measured by its size. When the plant reaches a certain size it is able to flower. Below that size very few plants flower and above that size as the plant gets larger it is more likely to flower. Researchers often count the number of leaves to estimate the plant size (its quick and easy). If a plant grower starts seeds and grows them in low nitrogen (relatively speaking) they count a certain number of leaves before the plant flowers. If they grow the same plant exactly the same way but give it more nitrogen the number of leaves required before it flowers is often larger. It takes more time to grow that number of leaves (and that is not a good thing for a commercial plant grower). But the plant is larger when it flowers. And there is a strong rule in plants that the larger the plant the more flowers and often the larger each flower. So more nitrogen can cause more leaves (and the leaves are larger) and it may delay the plant flowering. Delays in flowering, etc., are not good for commercial growers.

Daylilies will not necessarily suffer from delays in flowering if they have set seasons to flower and anything that increases the number of buds on a scape or the number of scapes in a clump is a good thing. So I tried high nitrogen. And I got rebloom where I had none before. So I went out and bought pure nitrogen - urea, last year. I will see the results of a small test using urea hopefully this year but if not then next year (the fans on the test cultivars were very small last year). I don't expect to get a high proportion of registered rebloomers to do so in my location - I probably quite simply do not have a long enough growing season or a warm enough growing season. For some cultivars the rebloom is not very effective for example, Mosel had never rebloomed here, I can get it to rebloom but it only does so at the very end of the season. Ophir is registered as a rebloomer - I doubt that I can get it to rebloom here. The ditch lily can rebloom in Florida - I sort of had rebloom on it here one year - a fan sprouted but all the leaves were eaten to the ground by deer. Then two new fans sprouted from the crown, then a lone scape grew (no leaves) between the two small fans and flowered and then the larger fan of the two new fans also flowered. I think that was forced rebloom that one sometimes sees on plants that have been newly divided and had their leaves cut back. The replanted division produces a scape, that the grower removes to help the division establish and then later on in the same year that fan produces another scape - I consider that forced rebloom.

@admmad
"So I went out and bought pure nitrogen - urea, last year. I will see the results of a small test using urea hopefully this year but if not then next year (the fans on the test cultivars were very small last year)."
I was wondering how the test was going, any update? Also any recommended rate of application for nitrogen for daylilies? Per plant, or per square feet? How often?

The test daylilies all flowered even though some of them had been very small; I did not notice any rebloom on them in 2014. I did not have high expectations that they would be large enough to rebloom last year. This year it is still somewhat early to check for rebloom as some clumps have still not shown any scapes. However, two of the seven test cultivars have produced rebloom scapes - these were produced while the first set of scapes were still developing.

The recommended rate from one study was 400 ppm (parts per million) per week of ammonium nitrate (for potted plants).

Tree_climber said:I have suggestions for rebloom in the north.

If you like smaller blooms, most of Martin Kamensky's (from Michigan) rebloom. You can see some of his at www.midaylilysociety.com the Southern Michigan Daylily Society website.

thank you for posting that link! I just saw that there is a daylily show in a week. Do you know if you have to RSVP in advance? I'm thinking of going and I'm having a hard time finding info about this year's show, the link takes me to info for the show in 2013. Do you have to pay an entry fee to go? How about to enter a daylily? (My understanding is that entries don't have to be or own intros, just beautiful representations of a particular cultivar, right? )

I have been to the Michigan show before and there never were fees to participate. I don't think that they changed that but I would maybe contact the SMDS to be sure. You used to have to bring the flowers you enter and fill out the stats on a card. I have been wanting to go again but it seems that I am always out of town on the weekend they have it and I will be this year again.

Cindy, sorry to hear you can't go. if I go, it would have been nice to meet you. Maybe a future time.

Maurice @admmad, I was wondering how the nitrogen - rebloom experiment went?

I was wondering how the nitrogen - rebloom experiment went?

I did not get rebloom on all the cultivars but the majority did rebloom with the nitrogen. I also have now had 'Ophir' rebloom which had never rebloomed before and which I had not expected to rebloom even if pushed with high nitrogen.

You are the second site that confirms that daylilies are heavy feeders, when most of others say it's easy or care-free plant. I will consider your advices this summer. Maybe I shall have good results, since I havenot seen my daylilies rebloom in zone 6 .

@MirelaCarare. Lots of good info and knowledgeable folks on here.

MirelaCarare,

I think it is good advice that daylilies do like a certain amount of a nitrogen boost. You did not say where you are located, so your statement about acting on this advice during the summer might not be the best timing to be adding nitrogen. I suppose the amount and the method would be very important to consider also. I like early spring and fall for adding fertilizer to my plants, but I am in zone 8b. During the hot summer my plants are usually pretty well stressed with the heat and the droughts we have had recently.
Edited to add:
I also wanted to mention that you may have also read that daylilies are very drought tolerant( and they seem to be), but the best thing to improve daylily performance is plenty of water. Some say adequate water is more important to performance than any fertilizer. I think this is probably the most common misconception people new to daylilies have, that they don't need or like much water.

@Seedfork
Do you give your plants any type of pick me up after the bloom season. Mine look so ratty and pitiful right about now. We've gotten plenty water the past few weeks and I think it's too hot to fertilize, but they look like they need something.

I am so inconsistent in my thinking along those lines. Mainly because my plants grow under such different conditions. There is no uniformity in my beds. So yes the plants growing in among the oak trees I feel need an extra boost, the plants growing under normal conditions normally get an extra boost, then there is the bog bed.
The bog bed is made up of mud and compost, lots and lots of compost, and here is where my inconsistency comes into play....they need an extra boost because with all those oak leaves I know the nitrogen level has to be low at this time of year...normally it is too hot at this time of year to put much nitrogen to them in fear it might possibly cause rot...then my brain says there is no need for any additives because the bog is covered with earth worm castings and what is better than that.
So my rational brain usually deserts me, if I have fertilizer on hand (a true weakness) I tend to use it. If not then my brain says the plants don't need a boost. Right now I have bags of high nitrogen fertilizer on hand, and the temps are cooler this August than I can ever remember, still I think I will wait till late September or early October when I am reworking the beds to use the fertilizer. I think it was Fred that mentioned that by doing it then he got a huge jump in plant development by spring.
what I have been doing is cleaning up the plants (pulling the dead scapes and dead and yellowing leaves ) as I evaluate a plant. I saw a video that said that if you want to avoid the two week period approximately, when the plants look so ratty to go ahead and pull the dead scapes and leaves, then they will generate new ones. I have been able to tell a much cleaner look in the garden, and have not bee able to tell it has degraded the plants performance. I can't say for sure but it sometimes seems it actually causes the plant to send up new scapes.
Speaking of plenty of rain all year, and now temperatures down in the 80' s for about two weeks, perfect rust weather. I have been sick the past three days and had to force myself out to the garden a few minutes to collect some soggy slimy seed pods, and the past blooms are molding right on the plant into a soggy mess, I try to pull those when I am well.

We hope you feel better soon, so that you can get back to your gardening routine, Larry.

Rest well and get better, Larry. The garden can wait!

Larry hope you are feeling your normal self again as you shake off that temporary bug.

Sadly we don't get rebloom in Yorkshire --but then we are around 54 degrees North!! Our growing season is just not long enough to allow for rebloom.

Although we are classed as zone 8a that is entirely due to (generally) mild winters, we get very little sunshine--our climate consists mainly of rain, strong wind and cloudy skies 😞

I need some sun, I'm starting to look like a vampire!

@Scatterbrain