Well put mags . What surprised me was I didn't see any trumpets or OTs like last time I visited the farm. As I drove up the drive I did see a field of lilies that appeared to be killed off with herbicide; no telling what type they were...

Anyhoo... I do hope they repeat this event .

Thanks for 'splainin Tracey.

I loved the tour! Thank you for the great photos!

Just stumbled across this thread tonight. I was in a "lily mood" and boy, did I come to the right place! I was sighing over all sorts of them! The idea of composting any of them just makes me teary-eyed. I can't imagine working in the midst of that much beauty every day. I suppose you might eventually become immune to it, but I think I'll just keep my sense of wonder, thank you very much!

Anyway, thanks for all the lovely pictures! We just got our first snow today (ugh!) and this shot of summer was just what I needed to cheer me up.

Glad you enjoyed the tour, Angie. I sure hope they repeat it in the near future. I don't want to wait five years between invitations!

Where was this located? I went back to re-read the first post, and didn't see the state or city listed anywhere. Just wondering what kind of climate is so ideal for all those glorious lilies!

Was it an invitation-only event? I think two of my gardening dreams are to visit an iris "farm" and a lily "farm" someday. I just can't imagine how overwhelming it would be to see (and smell!) all of those in such close proximity!

It is located here in Oregon in the Willamette Valley, where iris farms abound and lily hybridizing got its US jumpstart back in the 1940s at the Oregon Bulb Farms.

It was invitation only, for members of the Hardy Plant Society of Oregon Lily Study Group (the former Pacific Northwest Lily Society). I have to say though that they weren't carding anybody .

So the climate here is dry summers (no rain) and wet fall, winter and spring. I noted that Mak had drip lines running along his rows of lilies. I expect he has better drainage than me as I am close to the river and have heavy clay, while his place is atop a ridge.

Apparently Oregon has exactly the same climate as we have here[6 months difference though]..2 or 3 frosts, make the lilies better

What zone is Oregon in? That doesn't sound all that different than mine, 5a, in central IL. I have a lot of clay, too, as Mackinaw is in a river valley. I've been trying (in vain so far) to amend the soil around a couple of hydrangeas to get them to bloom blue. Apparently river silt is pretty alkaline.

Angie, I feel your pain about the hydrangeas. I have inherited a few mature 'Endless Summer' hydrangeas at my new place and I can't stand the light cotton candy pink blooms. I like my pinks dark, more in the fuchsia-magenta range. I have treated the soil around them with both garden sulfur and aluminum phosphate, but I will have to wait until next year to see the results, if any.

The problem with a lot of soil in this region is that not only is it alkaline, but it has tremendous buffering capacity. By the time you apply enough sulfur or aluminum phosphate to really acidify the soil, you will probably have fried the plants.

The Willamette Valley is generally Z8 but surrounded by hills and mountains. This is what moderates the weather here. We seldom get snow, but travel just a few miles to the east towards the Cascade mountains and the story is quite different. The soil is slightly acidic, and depending on the crop, some farmers lime their fields.

The geology is quite interesting in that the soil is not an effect of the Willamette River flooding over time, but from massive floods originating in Montana and carrying silt all across Eastern Washington, down the Columbia River and up the Willamette Valley. There were many floods dating to the last ice age ("Bretz floods) and they occurred during warming periods when ice dams holding back Lake Missoula broke in cataclysmic events. To make a long story short, the soil here arrived from places quite far away!

Corey, a hydrangea expert I know suggested I dig the hole for the hydrangeas much wider and deeper than usual, and use a mix of at least half peat moss with the garden soil when I filled it back in, in addition to adding the sulfur and aluminum phosphate. I didn't get them to turn a true blue, or even a dark purple, but I got at least this far, which gives me hope that it is possible:



I've also read that using pine needle mulch helps to acidify the soil, though I question how much effect that would have.

Angie,

I would be very happy if my hydrangeas gave me that color. It is much better than the horrible light pink they were this summer. Problem is, I didn't plant these hydrangeas and I know whoever did never bothered to amend the soil or even think about soil pH and bloom color.

Large amounts of pine needles, and also oak leaves, help to acidify the soil as they break down. However, for alkaline soil like ours it is not really a practical solution.

Corey

Corey, good luck with your hydrangeas! If you really can't stand the pink color, maybe you could find another gardener who would like them, and you could replace them with something that fits your color scheme better. I know how frustrating it is to have something stand out and clearly not belong. I have a batch of violently orange poppies that I just can't seem to get rid of, no matter how hard I try. They are brilliant, but they don't go with anything else in my garden!

Sorry for hijacking the lily thread. LOL Just realized how OT we are.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming. . .

Corey, Angie's hydrangea expert gave good advice, and it is probably your only real solution if you want to keep it. So you would need to dig it up next year and replant it. I used the same method for a blueberry patch in clay based alkaline soil at my parents' . Works like a charm. Make sure you use sphagnum peat (moss), as oppose to sedge peat.

I have an Endless Summer Hydrangea that was blue when I got it. kind of admit here that I bought it as a challenge/experiment to see how long it would be smurf blue at my alkaline house I mixed in some peat moss with my soil at planting time, one for acidity and two two help hold water as they get so droopy if they dry out at all that first year. The next spring I used aluminum sulfate and that Fall I mixed in soil sulfur. Since then, about four years ago now, it have been blue....I have added nothing that I can recall since. This year it was very pretty it had some pink blooms and some blue. It was actually really pretty. So in September, fearing the return of pink, I added soil sulfur. I don't know if it will act in the soil fast enough though. Time will tell.

Yes, time will tell.

I didn't know it was possible to have pink blooms on some stems and blue blooms on other stems of the same plant. Interesting. I suppose, maybe, that the roots that fed the blue bloom stems were in acid enough soil, while those that fed the pink bloom stems were not. It is a common phenomenon that certain roots feed certain branches in woody plants (trees and shrubs). Hydrangeas are somewhat woody.
Maybe....

I get all sorts of colors on mine when I try to acidify, pink, blue and sometimes purple on the same plant. Love that look, but it means it's going towards pink.

Yes, I could see that next year it would be pink, so away I go to get smurf blue once again. It's funny to me that those of us in natural alkaline soil wish for blue and that my grandma when she was in Washington State with her acidic soil, would do everything in her power to get her hydrangeas pink. Peculiar human beings, aren't we?