Larry - I think anyone considering adding a particular daylily cultivar to their garden, probably wonders the same thing. How will it perform in my zone, my climate, my yard, and my growing conditions? I have also read that many folks here on the forum have to move some of their daylilies to other locations in their yards to improve the plant's ability to show off. Some cultivars perform good in shade as well as full sun. Little pieces of info like that are very helpful and valuable.

Something I have been doing .... When I find a cultivar that I am REALLY interested in, I will Google the cultivar name and look at every single link to read about it and to look at more photos. I get a LOT of info sometimes doing that. I am reading other nursery's reports, individual garden blogs, and database info. Sometimes the hybridizer has the plant listed with more info on his/her website. Wouldn't it be nice to read all that kind of information on just one website like the ATP Database?!! I am sure everyone agrees with me.

@beckygardener - yes, yes, and more yes! That is what I do, too, but the researching is so laborious and time-intensive sometimes. So...just...yes, to everything you said.

I went out in the garden today and took some photos. Mostly just to see what the camera would actually show as far as branching and bud count and plant height (forgot to take the yardstick). It was very hard to get good photos of the branching and buds. So I used an old political sign I had painted white as a background and that works pretty well (I don't have to hold it, just push it in the ground).
I can see it will take some practice and experimenting to get good photos.

Larry - Using an old sign is actually a very good idea. I was thinking of getting one of those hard, foam poster boards to use as a background. I think you can get them at the Dollar Tree Store for a buck.

I forgot to mention that those foam boards are VERY light-weight and could be easily leaned up against another plant for support without doing any harm to anything in the garden. (Unless of course you have strong winds!)

Larry, I found your last picture to be especially interesting. Is that scape from a bud builder?

I would certainly classify it as one!

Yes, that is why I took that photo. It is a little NOID I got at Walmart.
Here is the bloom, nothing special but I am keeping it because it is looking like a better bud builder than my 'Crimson Pirate' so far. The little bloom is similar so I feel they must be related.

Edited to add:
Speaking of blooms, I think I read that you should measure the bloom(round forms maybe) by forming a circle around it and then measuring the circle. I estimated this bloom at 2 1/2 to 3 inches, but by measuring it came out at four inches.
I know that is not how you measure all blooms, but it will give you a good idea of the size.

Ok, for all of us in this thread like me who don't have a lot of experience with bud counts and branching I am posting this link to the blog by Floota (Julie Covington). I find it very helpful and I think it can help us get a good grasp on what we will be dealing with.
http://juliecovingtonat.blogsp...

Larry, it's funny you should mention that about how to measure the flower because I was just about to ask about that in another thread. I'm about to post some pictures in the July Blooms 2015 thread and I have a few of a seedling that I'm trying to come up with a description for and I have pictures with a ruler to help people help me. The 'circle' idea does help, though.

Larry - That was an excellent link!!! Thank you for sharing it!

More helpful info on branching: This is from the AHS site. This should help up all learn how to do it properly.
http://www.daylilies.org/ahs_d...

Char’s concerns about data integrity are legitimate. People will have to be honest about their motivation and agree to only enter data with honorable intentions. Honor systems can be abused and will not be perfect, but they can and do work.
People will have to be honest about their ability to properly count branches and buds. If they are unsure they should not submit data.
A moderator could watch for and delete “suspicious” data like really odd counts, or counts from a new and unknown user.
The data would go to a "user growing report data" section and not to the official ATP specifications for the cultivar. After some time if enough good data is collected for a cultivar a moderator could decide to update the official ATP specs for the cultivar with the user data.

Because there are quite a few factors that dramatically affect plant performance, performance could vary greatly in the same state, or even same part of a state. So I am still not sure that geographic region (state) is enough. However, if you try to track more of the factors the entry form starts to get long:

You are entering branching and bud performance for hemerocallis cultivar “Cultivar Name”.
Please note the following before continuing:

• Data must only be entered for mature, established clumps.
• No second-hand data. All data must have been actually gathered and verified by you.
• Branching and bud counts must be made accurately and according to AHS guidelines.
• If you are unsure of the accuracy or correctness of your data do not submit it.

Growing season:

• Year

Geographic location where plant was grown:

• Country
• State/Province
• Region (Central, N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW)

Sunlight exposure (select closest match):

• Shade
• Morning sun
• Afternoon sun
• Full day sun

Temperature conditions for the current year until the time data was collected:

• Number of cooling degree days: _______ (Possible resource for this http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/p...)
• Number of heating degree days: _______ (Possible resource for this http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/p... )

Average soil moisture conditions from natural and artificial watering (select condition that most closely matches what the plant generally experienced this growing season):

• Very dry
• Dry
• Moist
• Very moist
• Wet

General existing soil nutrient conditions (including amendments from previous years that provide long-term conditioning):

• Poor soil
• Average soil
• High-quality soil

Soil nutrient conditions from fertilizers/amendments this season:

• No fertilizers/amendments added
• Some fertilizers/amendments added
• Lots of fertilizers/amendments added

Branching Performance:

• Maximum branch count
• Average branch count
• Minimum branch count

Bud count performance:

• Maximum bud count
• Average bud count
• Minimum bud count

Comments


By clicking the submit button I declare that to the best of my knowledge and abilities the above data is true and accurate
Submit

 

That would be great if we could get anyone to fill out all that info.
I was just looking for a simple average bud count and branch count with the extra bonus of maybe a plant height.

That would be very very nice, but how many people would actually go through and fill in all those details for a number of plants? (I'd really like a show of hands. Such a feature is doable for me but would take some time to make. I'd only want to do this if we thought we'd get pretty good participation.)

Dennis - I think that is a bit too much for the average gardener to consider filling out. Just my humble opinion.

LOL so true. OK, the geographic region could be part of the user's profile and can be defaulted in, throw out the degree days questions and that leaves 4 additional questions to click one of the available answers for. Maybe 20 seconds?

Otherwise, if only a couple people enter data for a cultivar the numbers could be really misleading. You might need a lot to get a meaningful average. Especially if a cultivar's performance varies greatly with growing conditions-- you will probably get a very wide range of values that would have little meaning trying to summarize as one overall average. However, I would agree that something is better than nothing...

I would like to see the age of the plant on the form just because I know people won't read the part about just being a mature clump, and what is a mature clump? Then maybe Dave could have the computer kickout anything say under 2 years (or whatever is decided on). I would also love to show the the height of the plant, I think that would let us know to some extent considered along with the age, if the plant is growing under really abnormal conditions or not.

Sorry for the run-on paragraph, but the 'Enter' key suddenly stopped working...Dennis, I love your form and the time that you put into it! I do agree, however, that it might be a bit too long. You mentioned that we would need to get a lot of data, and I think we're likely to do that by 'featuring' particular cultivars and, hopefully, everyone that has that cultivar would chime in and submit their data, resulting in a large body of data for many of the cultivars. (Maybe any with less than 3 responses could be added with a question mark.) I think water fluctuates too much in any given garden, even. For instance, sometimes my soil is very soggy, and other times it is as dry as a bone...even just within a few days of each other. My clay-like soil is baking in the weather we are having right now; I have been watering nearly every day, but on the days I don't, it's crispy. And yet, some days I walk around my yard and it's sloshy in areas...so how would I register my soil? There might be ways to figure this out...and it really is based on averages, so it might work, but there will be people who won't know how to fill it out and we would have to be prepared for that. Do average branch counts really change that much based on all of those variables? Or does a plant usually have about the same average number of buds/branches from plant to plant and from place to place? I'm mulling all of this over...

I am thinking just climate factors alone will greatly affect the bud count and branching but it would be interesting to see the difference. If it turns out after we get results from across the country on a few cultivars, that the counts are looking to be pretty much the same then I would be surprised, and I guess all this would be of little value. But if we see a trend for some plants to do better in certain areas then that would aid in determining if the plant would be good for our area. If we could get a good number of people to participate, and gain useful info, then I am sure adjustments could be made as needed.