Tomorrow morning i am going to help dig and move daylily clumps at the local garden where i buy most of my plants. They are hybridizers so she has to make room for more seedlings. Earlier this year she thinned out her $5 ones and some at 8 and this time 8-12 $ ones will get the ax so they will pay me with those.
Have no idea what will be available other then looking through the website and guessing what i may come home with. I will take no more than 6 though as space is becoming hard to find and some of these clumps may be big and i have already added 29 new ones thus far in the year.
I don't care what i dream about tonight or if at all but to paid in plants is this gardeners dream.
Has anyone else been paid in plants? Please share your experience. Pics of my garden below.

oh wow, you are SO lucky!!

a. to have a DL nursery so close by
b. they have $5 and $8-12 plants!!
c. they are going to pay you for your hard work with DL's...

just, wow!

But you take only 6 plants home...? bummer..
I can still see a lot of lawn in your photo's... so there MUST be more space for DL's!


Mayo

I keep saying that I have no-more room for daylilys and my wife keeps reminding me that there are 5 acres of meadow behind the house.
I get tired just thinking about it.

Wish I could find someone willing to work for daylily pay! Commuting from Indiana really isn't all that far...

Have fun digging

Yes, I was paid by David Kirchhoff for potting seedlings to take to Kentucky. I don't even remember the plant he gave me. That was years ago, and I purge when plants don't do what they should.

I've only gotten daylily seeds for free. Which I sowed and still grow.

Have fun digging and picking which ones you want!

dogwalker said:I keep saying that I have no-more room for daylilys and my wife keeps reminding me that there are 5 acres of meadow behind the house.
I get tired just thinking about it.

Exactly. Doing all the hard work to get a new bed ready for planting is one thing but the upkeep over and above what you already have can make you feel old. Next year the preen comes out early because this year we had record rainfall and the weeds went crazy. Yes i could have pulled weeds in a full rain suit but i didn't want the neighbors thinking i was crazy even though they are easier to pull.
Char i would love to visit Vermont some time. I bet you have more trees then we do corn.
And yes i said only six but i minored in math not majored so i may lose count accidentally of coarse.

Mayo62 said:oh wow, you are SO lucky!!

a. to have a DL nursery so close by
b. they have $5 and $8-12 plants!!
c. they are going to pay you for your hard work with DL's...

just, wow!

But you take only 6 plants home...? bummer..
I can still see a lot of lawn in your photo's... so there MUST be more space for DL's!


Mayo

Yeah i know but the sad thing is i can mow the yard much faster than i can weed all the beds. Wish it were the other way around than i would be a champion weeder.

I only have 2 small beds, so I wouldn't mind weeding more if that meant more beds and more DL's...

I guess the grass is always greener.... and the DL's always more striking... on the other side of the fence

So today i worked at the farm for 5 hours and was able to come home with 7 new starts.
Raptor
Morning For Flamingos
Truly Angelic
Dragon King
Storm Surf
How Beautiful Heaven Must Be

And then the last on totally by surprise she asks me if i want this start of Princess Diana and i said okay. When i got home i am showing my wife the photos of all i got on their website and when Princess Diana comes up its 45.00 dollars a start and very beautiful. All i could say was wow.

I am going back next Saturday because there is more work to do. What i am saying its a daylily farm the work is never done until the bone chilling winds of winter blow.

Congrats, Kevin!!! Way to go!

fantastic, Kevin!!

Well earned, I'm sure


Mayo

Little harder work than i thought but it was perfect day. Not humid and slight breeze and some chicken nuggets for lunch. Lol. Some of the clumps were very big and others were lined out in 2-3 fan clumps. Only a third of the digging done and i must have dug 50 diff. cultivar which means i will sleep well tonight.
Guess i'll spend part of this week making room for the new ones and whatever i get next week. I do not have space for quantity so have to go for quality.

kssmith said: I do not have space for quantity so have to go for quality.

Perfect!!
Having a very small garden I try to do the same

Being a newbie I made the mistake last Spring to buy 6-9 fans of the cultivars that I saw in an online catalog...
Bit by bit I'm discovering what I like, what I love and what I 'NEED to HAVE!' and I've ordered just single or double fans now
What I really like can stay and will perhaps be added to, but some of the 'old ones' (from last April! ) will be given away completely or reduced in number

When space in an issue sometimes you have to make tough decisions..

so...
today I'm digging up my Alchemilla mollis, some of my garden Geraniums and part of my lawn to make MORE room for DL's!!



Mayo

That's great Kevin! I wish I had a nursery near here, I'd be happy to help and having some DL in turn!

Mayo wrote, "so...
today I'm digging up my Alchemilla mollis, some of my garden Geraniums and part of my lawn to make MORE room for DL's!! "

My kind of thinking exactly!! Pretty soon, my hubby will not have to mow the lawn at all!

Getting paid in daylilies is always fun.

Twice I have been lucky enough to be offered plants for helping an elderly club member clean or reduce their garden.

Our club as a whole benefited when a former member asked us to dig out his garden before selling his house. we used the daylilies for our sale.

How wonderful, Kevin! Getting Princess Diana was a great bonus!!

I helped my neighbor recently and she offered to give me some, but I didn't want her to think that getting daylilies was the reason for helping her, so I turned them down. Since she lives one block away, I know I can see them anytime I want to go over. She has around 1000 daylilies!!

I sure wish I lived close to a daylily farm again. The one that was 10 miles away closed in 2011. I sure miss it.

Mayo i think that is what i am going to do in the spring is dig more yard and make my big L-shaped bed bigger by 4 or 5 feet. Then i should have another 16-20 square feet to work with. So maybe another 9-12 plants. I am going to dig out some iris and sedum today and move them around to the front of the house.
I know we have doubles of several cultivar so i would like to sell them in the spring or maybe even now. I have given about 7 away to coworkers this year so that has helped a bit.
The garden is about 3 miles from me but if i had one just one block away i'd be over there like a stray cat begging for milk.

Kevin - Make sure that you put a path through your garden bed if you are going to expand it that much. I have a rule of thumb that a bed can not be any wider than I can get my arm to reach to the other side. Or I can double that as long as I am able to reach from the front AND the back of the garden bed. I hate having to step into a bed and compress the soil and roots of my plants.