For those of you in the north who grow daylilies with evergreen foliage, do you cut the leaves in fall and mulch over them or leave them alone and just mulch around them?

I cut the foliage on pretty much everything towards the end of November. I try to do it before Thanksgiving when yard waste collection stops. I don't mulch the beds very regularly. The reason for these two decisions has to do with the amount of snow we typically receive and the climate in the spring. If I leave the foliage on, or mulch too heavily, it traps too much moisture in the growing tip and near the crown and will kill the plant if I can't get it cleared out ASAP.

Even when it was -15 this past winter we had 2 feet of snow to insulate the plants. I ran into trouble because I happened to be out of town when we finally thawed and I didn't get the tops of the plants opened up soon enough.

I don't cut any foilage.

I don't cut foliage either, but pull off old leaves when the plants show some signs of growth. -Lost a semi-evergreen this year to crown rot, but only one plant. I'm starting to think some of them are just more susceptible to it than others.

--Don't use a lot of mulch either. I think some of the evergreens are more hardy than we give them credit for!

I grew a few evergreens in Utah, where we had a LOT of snow. They became dormant after a while, but I bought them from someone in Utah who had been growing them for a few years already. They adjusted to their environment, and I never had any loss. I never cut the foliage, but mulched well. I never put the mulch over the plant, but it would migrate to the middle of the plant over winter, so I would have to pull it back in the Spring when the snow started to melt. I removed the old leaves off at that time. I think the leaves gave the plants a little extra insulation.

I never cut the foliage either, feeling the leaves provide some insulation from the extreme cold especially if we have a year with not much snow. I do mulch heavily but not around the crown. In the Spring, I get that mulch off as quickly as possible or reduced by half, and clean up all the dead foliage.

I'm in zone 4 - I never cut the leaves and I do not mulch.