My daylilies are by no means through blooming this year, but that's not saying much. On the other hand, I have only myself to blame—Mother Nature didn't have anything to do with it.
I undertook an ambitious 'divide and replant' program last year, but.... I ran out of cash, and couldn't afford to have any more Black Kow delivered, so I planted about half of my daylilies in plain old Florida sand.
We live on one of, but not the, highest hills in Marion County. At 150 ft elevation, I always thought it was the highest spot in the county, but I looked at a topographical map of the county a few years back and learned there are a few spots in the county that are 200 ft above sea level.
Anyhow, to make a long story short, our hill is just one humongous pile of what we call 'sugar sand.' It's soft and porous, and water soaks into it instantly. Seriously, it could rain for 40 days and 40 nights, and we wouldn't have any standing water - what didn't soak in would run down hill to the lake that wraps around our side of the hill.
The soil was absolutely perfect for my late father's orange groves, but the freezes of 1983 and 1984 took care of that. Florida was on the cold edge of a 90-year cycle at that time. It happened in 1894 and 1895, and will probably happen again circa 2070.
Without heavy applications of things like composted cow manure, or peat, or other substances, the soil isn't really suitable for daylilies, and half of my cultivars show it. Interestingly, they have good root systems, but not a lot of foliage. We accidentally dug one up while weeding, and it had a ton of roots. My theory (using the SWAG method) is that the poor plants devote all their energy to producing roots, looking for nutrition, and the foliage suffers.
For those of you who don't know the SWAG acronym, it stands for 'silly wild-a** guess.'
Starting in August, we (my partner and myself) are going to fix that problem by redoing all of the beds and moving 300 or so plants. It's a daunting task, but an absolutely necessary one.
Fortunately, there's a Black Kow dealer just 10 miles from us who delivers the stuff by the cubic yard. One cu yd of Black Kow at $35 is the equivalent of about 20 of those $5 bags they sell in Home Depot and elsewhere. And because we're so close, the delivery charge is negligible.
So much for the sad tale of my daylily beds.
