How well does evergreen foliage daylilys survive in the north?

I'm in Ontario but zone 4 (USDA), zone 5 under the Canadian system, and I grow evergreens, semi-evergreens and dormants. Any of these foliage types can be hardy or not hardy. Because of the prolonged cold winter they all become dormant. So it's a question of whether the individual cultivar is hardy regardless of its foliage habit.

Thank you Sooby.

I do not check registered foliage on the daylilies I buy so I grow many evergreens in zone 4 and they are nearly all dormant during our winter, that is they lose their leaves and form a bud. Their foliage does not survive winter here.

Of the many hundreds of registered cultivars that I grow there may be two diploid registered evergreens that act as evergreens and may not form a bud during our winters. Their leaves are killed back down to about 2 or 3 inches from the soil surface by the winter cold. I have been growing them for at least 12 years and they are both single tiny fans about 1/8" wide. Any increase they may make during a growing season usually is completely killed by winter.

Yesterday and today I have been reading about seedlings of other perennials that may not survive their first winters because they are apparently too small to have developed an overwintering bud. If these two cultivars survive the coming winter I will try to force their growth with fertilizer next year to try to make them larger and see if that helps them survive future winters.

Another registered evergreen diploid that I have seen bloom only once here in about 10 years I have managed to increase to three decent size fans and one small fan this year. Sadly none of the fans bloomed. I hope that it survives this coming winter better than it has in the past and that I may see bloom next year.

I don't have a list of all the cultivars that I grow but perhaps I may make one as a winter project and check to see how many evergreens I grow that act as normal dormants. At the moment there appear to be three out of probably about 800 registered cultivars (of all foliage types) that are registered as evergreen and may act as evergreen here.

are there any that you keep outside in the summer and bring inside to keep going during the winter? Or would that mess with them too much?

gargoyl52 said:are there any that you keep outside in the summer and bring inside to keep going during the winter? Or would that mess with them too much?

I have tried that a couple of times and lost the "special" plants that I thought might not make it through winter. Usually I have done that because the plant was a new purchase that had been potted when it arrived in the spring because I did not have a prepared bed to plant it in and then it did not get planted. Since I have lost daylilies left in pots during winter here I do not trust that it would survive. I bring the pot into the house for the winter and end up losing it anyway.

Now if I have such pots left at the start of winter I put them into an unheated garage or other building or leave them outside to the elements.

I do bring some daylilies inside but those are for tests or experiments during the winter; they are not usually new arrivals and those are never expensive plants.

Bringing them inside can mess with the plants. They may bloom inside and then usually do not make enough growth to bloom again the next summer.

I had 'Siloam June Bug' in a pot for a test inside last winter. It is just starting to bloom now in the pot outside. It is coming back inside for another test this winter.

How about starting seeds over the winter and planting outside in the spring

gargoyl52 said:How about starting seeds over the winter and planting outside in the spring

Yes, that will give them a head start in growing. If they grow well enough inside and well enough outside in the next growing season it is possible that you might get some seedlings to flower near the end of the growing season, depending on your location, growing conditions and the genetics of the seedlings.