A friend has given me buckets of daylilies with roots for my garden club plant sale. I have potted up a dozen of them, but there is still lots more that need to be separated. I currently have these in buckets with water and they are green and some are actually flowering. Is there another easy way to get them ready to sell without separtating and potting them up? I was thinking, keep them in the water until right before the sale and them put them into either plastic or paper plant sleeves? Any suggestions will be appreciated as time and the cost of the potting soil and pots is a factor.
Thanks,
Patricia

Hi!

When is the sale? If it is not too far from now you could store them bare-root and dry and they should be fine.

Almost all that are ordered are shipped bare-root, and they are fine. Just let people know that they should soak them in water for a few hours before planting them.

Thanks both to Natalie and James......Since the sale is towards the end of May, I think the bare root answer may be good.
I will tell the buyers to soak the roots before planting. This method will save me lots of time and money. The potting soil alone
was getting expensive!
Patricia

I don't think that the daylilies would like almost 2 months without being in a pot. You could plant them in the gound and then dig them up the day before the sale. We sell daylilies sometimes and we usually dig them up the day before.

I agree with Jon. Two months is a long time for bare root daylilies. They almost have to be in the ground or in a pot.

Jon, that is a very good point. 2 months really is a long time. I was thinking at first that the sale wasn't that far off, but I would be afraid to have them out of the ground for two months.

But, Daylilies are sold bare-root in the big box stores, stuck in a bag, and there is no way to know how long they have been there. If you can get them in the ground, as Jon suggested, that would be best, but if you can't, they may be just fine. I'd cut all of the foliage back to about 6 inches, and keep your fingers crossed! I bought daylilies from some big box stores in the past, and they always grew, even though I was pretty sure that they wouldn't.

Good luck to you, no matter which way you do it!

with Jon. While potting would be the best way to ensure happy purchasers at your plant sale, second choice would be to put them in the ground and dig them the day before the sale. This will set them back, they may not bloom this year, but if replanted in May/June will have time to recover and settle in before fall/winter. I would also divide them as you plant, this will make the job of digging and cleaning them off easier later. I would not keep them in water or bareroot for nearly two months.

I don't have the room to plant all of these in my garden because I am currently trying to make space for straw bales. I want to try the straw bales planting method this year for veggies. Anyway, these daylilies were given to me about 2 months ago and they have been okay so far in the buckets with rain water. In fact, some are currently blooming. They need dynamite to separate the roots. No, I am kidding, but it has been a struggle. I will try to put some in the ground, or at least in a place with dirt. The rest I will watch as I have more than a dozen already in pots.
Thank-you all for your advice,
Patricia

If you decide to keep them in water Pat, just make sure you change the water a few times a week and don't allow the crown to be under water.

To Hemlady.......I find I need to change the water in the buckets almost every other day as I discovered little pollywog things swimming in there. That's probably mosquito larve and I don't want that! So, I do empty the buckets every other day. So far, the plants look good. Thanks for the tip about not allowing the plant crown to be under water. I didn't know that.

Patricia

You are welcome. Yes mosquitos definitely will lay their eggs in the water and you certainly don't want a bumper crop of them.

There are mosquito disk things you can put into the water, to kill off the mosquito larvae.

Ditto on keep the crowns out of the water, and maybe change the water. Depending on how hot it is/will be where you are, you may also want to keep those tubs of water in the shade. Ask me how I know.

Oh - and you will want to be wary of losing the labels off your plants, or else the writing off the labels on your plants, while they are sitting in tubs for two months. Ask me how I know that, too! The fix there is to make your own labels and wire them firmly onto the plants, otherwise keep only one cultivar per tub - and make sure you know which tub is which!