(The first several sentences do have to do with daylily rust... I promise...)
Late last night (after midnight) we let our dog Warp out for his bedtime potty, which resulted in him running around the swimming pool, barking like mad and generally raising heck.
DH and I went out there with flashlights to see what all the fuss was about (there have been frogs in the pool which Warp has gotten excited about, but without this racket), and discovered that there was a raccoon swimming in the pool!
We eventually managed to get hold of Warp and leash him up, during which time the coon climbed out of the pool and made its escape.
Now, I have three daylily seedling beds right next to that pool deck. One of them is full, the other two we just built. I had been watching that bed frequently checking for scapes (currently scapes on 5 of the 75 seedlings; 10 seedlings are too new to bloom this year), so today I anxiously went out there to see if the raccoon had gotten into the bed and damaged the plants.
No damage to the seedlings (I do have some wire fencing in there, sort of in hoop tunnels, over all but a small part of the bed). Thankfully, no scapes were broken. (The image below is from January 1st of this year, clearly showing the wire fencing hoops. They were placed that way both to discourages birds and small mammals, and also to protect the tiny seedlings from dog and deer. It looks like we have now successfully fenced the deer out, but I am keeping fencing on the seedlings to protect them from the other critters.)
BUT... for the first time (since these got planted out last spring) I saw rust on some of the seedlings. In particular, the rust was on some (expected to be) near-white tets, and also a cross I had high hopes for to produce polys.
I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, since last winter (a year ago) every seedling that went into the bed had at least a tiny bit of rust. But I plucked leaves and discarded the rustiest seedlings (rather than planting them), and the patch had been clean of rust since last spring. I am not happy.
To make matters worse, right now I can't get at the back of the bed (where the rusty seedlings are) to spray or pull leaves or do anything, because my garden workers have a mountain of redwood fines there, literally up against the edge of the bed. That is going to be their first task come Friday, to move that mulch away from the bed, so I can get in there and pull leaves or whatever. I guess maybe it was a stroke of luck, or at least good timing, that I just recently learned about the Serenade and got some. I have a feeling I will be using it.
(I will try to give an update on those daylilies that I did treat (yesterday) with the Serenade maybe in a few days, or later.)
