Hello!
I just joined this forum and was so grateful to find it! You all are so knowledgeable and all of my internet searches have not yielded any answers. I garden a lot, but am not overly knowledgable (breadth, not depth here) so I apologize in advance if I say something wrong.
I live outside of Boston and over the past few years have bought over a hundred of several varieties of beautiful day lilies (Happy Returns, Fire Chief Benjamin, Wineberry Candy, just to name a few). I planted most of them along a split rail fence in front of my house. (Edited photo below as I don't currently have access to the original). Last year, I noticed some taller day lilies coming up early that looked just like the ditch lilies that grow in other places on our road. It was a busy summer, and I ignored them. This year, even more of the taller lilies are coming up at the same pace as the ditch lilies and seem to be crowding out my "good" day lilies. I just dug out all of the tall ones this morning, trying to get all of the roots. The tall ones that I dug out have yellowish-orange roots, with the occasional white root (tuber?) mixed in. I am so afraid that I have lost most of my day lilies to the infiltrators. I can't understand how they got there, and I don't know how to tell them apart from my good lilies other than going by height at this point.
Any advice on how I can save my day lilies would be much appreciated! I have put a lot of time and money into this project and hate for it all to be for nothing!
Thank you!
Heather