I have fertilized my daylilies more than ever this year, and am just wondering how much difference in leaf width fertilizing normally makes. Does it have a big effect on some and almost no effect on the leaf width of others. I checked today and some of my mature plants only have a leaf width of 1/4 inch and others have a leaf width of 1 7/8 inches. The wide leaves looked strange to me because I have never had any that wide before. So I am wondering is it the fertilizer or the variety that is accounting for the extra wide leaves. Don't know the varieties yet, waiting on them to bloom to properly place my plant name markers. The great majority of my plants have a leaf width of 7/8 to 1 1/4 inch.

Given a random group of plants...all taken care of the same way...you will for sure have variance in width. Thank goodness too, because I dont like the really fat leaves. Of course, I would rather it fat and green than skinny and yellowish.

gardenglory,
Does your fertilizer program seem to change the width of your plants leaves to any noticeable degree?

I will answer this way. When I get a plant from Nicole Harry, and I see those leaves, I know its something that I wont see again, they are very large. They usually get a bit smaller in my garden with just regular fertilizing. From that, I draw the unscientific conclusion that yes indeed, fertilizer can change things. Cant change genetics tho,,,and those do differ from plant to plant. From what I have observed, depending on sun and water and feeding, you can buff up a daylily plant pretty good.

Im sure there are many sellers that have plants as big as Nicoles, it was just an example that I have experienced.

Yes I see what you are saying, of course one could pump the plants up like athletes on steroids. But you seem to think that a normal fertilization program would not significantly change the plants leaf size. that it would depend more on genetics? Being these wide leafed plants are growing right next to normal width leafed plants then I am assuming it would be genetics causing them to be large and not that one plant benefits a lot more from fertilizer than another?

That is what I think. It is based on no real knowledge tho, except observation over many years.

I keep reading that the best thing to do for rust is first pull off the infected leaves.
The best thing to do for plants with leaf streak is pull the infected leaves.
The best thing to do for plants with leaf miner infestation is to pull the infested leaves.
Now where did all my daylilies go?

I feel you there.

Mike Huben have a very informative article here on rust.
http://world.std.com/~mhuben/r...

I was messing around outside this morning, found a pot with Nicole Harry's Chasing Venus in it.
I dont know how it got there, but its had very little sun and no care for a good year, if not two. The leaves are as thin as society garlic

I will check out the rust article as well. This year...its slugs...the slugs are killing me. Ill trade any day for rust, these things are destroying the flower itself, and thats not cool. Of course, everyone is probably so tired of hearing about it by now

I have been mixing up a diluted solution of ammonia in a 1qt spray bottle and spraying any sighted slug or snail in the morning, it seems to be working for the daylilies, but not so much for the hostas being there are more hiding spaces among all the hostas leaves.

I had a lot of slugs last spring but thankfully they didn't touch the daylilies. Instead they ate up all the wild violets in my beds and that made me very happy!!!!

The foliage on daylilies will vary from plant to plant even on seedlings with the same cross because of all the possible combinations from the two parents.
I have had the worse slug problem this year than I remember, and I think it's due to all the rain.

May be a bad year for slugs. I found several on the daylilies this week and it's not because of a lot of rain. I'm trying to figure out how they managed to cross the desert that is my yard to get to a spot that gets some supplemental water!

Mike - Thank you for that link. I followed some of the links listed in the article and found this one to confirm what I have felt all along about rust and why I don't treat the rust in my garden:

http://world.std.com/~mhuben/k...

Some day there may be a "post-rust" garden. Someday.

I do wish there were a lot more recent info about rust. Surely science and gardeners have made progress in 14 years.

What specific kind of info are you looking for, Larry? There has been recent research, and other rust articles, published in the AHS's journal, and there's a list of scientific journal articles on my daylily rust info site, some quite recent, here:

http://web.ncf.ca/ah748/articl...

Well, after reading some of the latest data, I guess what I was looking for has not been found yet.

Well, since I don't know what you're looking for it's hard to help

A cure!