I used Daconil for the rust. It is affordable and can be found at local garden centers. I was thinking about using something else that is stronger this year but do not know what right now. I may stay with Daconil since it has worked for us. I may use a dip of some kind for the new daylilies coming and then use the Bayer 3 In 1 for those in conjunction with the Daconil spray for all the daylilies. Maybe others will tell us what they use.
I used the generic brand of Avid which is Abamectin for the insecticide and miticide. Tink told us about it on another thread last spring. I bought it on Ebay or Amazon.com. Don't remember which. It is cheaper than Avid but still cost just under $100. Don't remember the quantity but you use only a small amount, so it will last several years. It is down in our storage building. I will have to check to see what the quantity is. I was pleased with it. This past summer is the first year that we finally had blooms on Gary Colby. Previous summers we might have one or two blooms. The spider mites really like that daylily in our garden.
One thing that I regret not doing is spraying the generic Avid at least one more time. I only sprayed once and that took care of the aphid, thrip, and spider mite problem. I did not see signs of leaf miners until after the daylilies were well into their bloom season. By that time a new batch had hatched out. I will be more persistent this year to keep the leaf miners out of the garden. I don't like seeing their trails on the daylily foliage. I don't notice it so much during the growing season, but they show up in the pictures that we take and look at during the off season, like now. I cut back the foliage in the late fall and clean out any dead foliage around the plants to help prevent insects from overwintering in this foliage. I still have some areas now that still have foliage that has not been cut back. I will work on it on good weather days. The evergreens will put up new foliage. By doing this is the late fall, I don't have to spend a lot of time in early spring cleaning out the dead foliage around the daylily plants. The beds will be ready to put down fertilizers in early spring followed by mulch. Anything I can do before early spring helps tremendously. I want to start spraying for insects once the foliage puts up. Depending on the weather, that could be mid March to early April here. During normal weather years, we start searching for the first scape sighting in late April.
I have been planting daylilies this week. I know it's not the preferred time for planting, but I don't want to overwinter them in pots. These are daylilies that we acquired in September and did not get planted. We got a new bed made this week. Our lowest temperature so far was about 24 degrees a few times. We should get into the teens several times before the winter is over. I hope so to kill out the rust spores. I hope to plant more potted daylilies Monday. I also have a bed of daylilies that I want to move to other beds in the next few weeks. I have daylilies in pots to go into this bed. That will be my next project (creating a red, white, and blue daylily bed). The scapes will probaby be shorter and fewer buds on these daylilies that I am planting/moving so late. At least they will be established before the hot, dry summer gets here.
Doris
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