My Mary Ethel Andersons have just started flowering this week. I find the cultivar an excellent garden plant. Well, to be honest, when I first planted it, it was not - it was a dismal performer. When wet, it looked bedraggled and, when dry, it looked withered. The blooms were too few and buds dropped. So, four years ago, I dug it up and divided it into four fans and replanted throughout the garden. The results were miraculous. The four separate fans took off like rockets and it has been one of my best bloomers since (one clump subsequently flowered 11 months straight. Amazing). Here it first blooms from about mid-October to early November and often reblooms through to March.
I am a great believer in this technique: if a daylily plant isn't going well, dig it up, trim foliage and roots, divide and move.
My present clumps respond well to fertiliser and Epsom salts and boom when mulched with alfalfa or lucerne pellets. Raid your guinea pig's pellets if you have too. Don't use the mulch because alfalfa has a strong tap root if it becomes established in amongst the fans from seeds in the mulch. Hose the pellets into the soil.
Here in the subtropics MEA acts as an evergreen with no decrease in foliage over winter. It is fairly tolerant of rust and usually only needs a leaf trim.
The only problem I can think of with MEA is a generic difficulty: I am never quite sure where to place miniatures in a large garden of daylilies. How do other people effectively situate miniatures in their gardens?
This is today's bloom.
PS. I have not bred from it but I notice it has many bee pods each year that have viable seed. Mine was sold as a diploid.
PPS. 22 June 2016. After hybridising that summer, I found MEA diploid and easily pod and pollen fertile.
Love Love Mary Ethel
