I have used empty plastic kitty litter bins with holes drilled in the bottom and a layer of gravel as pots. The daylilies sure love them!
Last summer I had some evergreens, and since I am pretty new with the daylily stuff (the addiction only took a month or two, I swear!) I put them into what I thought was a temporary pot ghetto. The garden I planned to have landscaped, along the sunny southern side of my house, was where I wanted to plant them. Only problem was that life occurred, and the massive evergreens didn't get pulled, and the landscaping never got done (it's on a slope).
No problem I thought, I have successfully overwintered plants in my insulated garage, so I popped them in there.
Where they got rust, then aphids, then goodness knows what else.
So I tossed the pot ghetto outside in a protected area.
I believe if we had had a normal winter & spring, things might have survived. But we didn't. It was warmer than usual, with a March heat wave. Then spring returned with frigid wet weather in April.
And I lost everything.
What I have learned here on the forum was that I should have turned those pots on their side, at least toward the end of winter - even though my pots have good drainage. The weather didn't help my in ground daylilies, I lost several of those - but not many, and managed to save a couple too.
No matter, I will never overwinter daylilies in pots up here in Wisconsin again. Meanwhile, all the other plants I overwintered in my garage did well. I was still harvesting parsley in May from the previous year, and my basil lasted until December.
This year I have more daylilies in pots, they love those bins - and they WILL get planted hopefully this weekend into the ground.
I think pot growing is better the higher the zone one lives to a certain extent. But for temporary homes, they can work well up here, even those kitty litter biins ~JAn
