Have anyone ever lost evergreen daylilies to cold temps between 0 to 10F? I wonder if my evergreens will make it through this extended cold spell.

It depends on the individual cultivar's hardiness. The evergreens I have here survive -22F and lower (-30C) most winters. Right now they have a few inches of snow cover which helps, but some years not as much. But they don't get the freeze/thaws here which probably helps, it stays mostly below freezing for months each winter. Any daylily can be hardy, or not, regardless of foliage habit.

Karen,
I loose a few Daylilies every winter but I don't think it is the cold. When the temps are regularly moving up and down with freeze and thaw, I think it is much harder on the plants.
I have read and spoken to northern growers who claim to rarely loose Daylilies.
We had 5 degrees on New Years morning, 5 days below freezing, and today was 53. In a week we will be back to teens and it could be over 60 before the end of January. Before winter is over we will freeze and thaw 20 times more.

Winter doesn't kill most of my daylilies. It's the Spring when it flips between cold/wet & warm/sunny multiple times. The worst is when each period lasts 2-3 weeks. The evergreen & Sev daylilies start to grow only for the new leaves to get severely damaged.

Karen, I am petrified for spring as we've had some bitterly cold temps, with only a little snow cover... Just crossing everything hoping that all the new ones had enough time to settle and adapt...

I'm a little worried also about the possibility of losing some. Especially ones that were new to the garden in 2017. I don't pay a tremendous amount of money on any one DL so I just chalk it up to survival of the fittest. If I had expensive ones out there...I'd probably be losing sleep. We've had such COLD weather with very little snow cover. Now next week is supposed to get up to 35 which is a big change from all the below 0 temps we've had.

Right now, I'm feeling really happy that I decided to "make lemonade" this past fall rather than just complain. My neighbor does nothing about fall leaf collecting, and she has a fully grown oak tree (about 110') about 4' from the property line. For years, IVe HATED that tree, but just raked and whined as all the leaves fall late (even through DEc) and end up on my property . The grass kept on growing until the end of Nov. since the irrigation system wasn't turned off until that time. So this year, instead of raking up appr. 40-50 huge bags of leaves and resentfully leaving them at the curb each week, I decided to run the mulching mower with the collecting bag every few days. It was labor intensive, as it would take 3-4 hrs. each time to get the entire yard as the mower had to be stopped and bag emptied frequently, but over the course of about 6 weeks, there were enough ground up leaves and grass clippings collected to cover the entire garden with a 6-8" layer of ground mulch. Given the extreme bitter temperatures, this is is reassuring, as many plants were moved in both spring and fall 2017. We get little snow cover here. I'm hoping this will minimalize losses this year.

I am concerned too. This might be the first year I lose a daylily or two to extreme temps. Highs in the teens at the beginning of the January, then by the end of the month, highs in the 40's and 50's. Then in February it will probably freeze again. Freezing and thawing is always a concern here in southern Indiana.

I used to have an oak tree that covered a good portion of my daylilies, but it had to be taken down. It will be nice not to have to rake away the tons of leaves next spring, but I do miss it and the nutrients it provided when the leaves broke down.

On a good note though, I pray that all this cold weather has killed the rust!

I just picked up two truck loads of pecan leaves sitting by the road yesterday and shredded them up to add to the garden. It only took a few minutes to shred them with my riding mower after the leaves were spread out over the ground(pecan leaves shred up so much easier and finer than oak leaves).
I have lots of oak trees but no pecan trees. I sifted a wheelbarrow full, and had the most beautiful mulch which I then added to about a half dozen plants down in the bog. This year I am seeing what looks like ice cicles shooting up from the black frozen mud, it will be interesting to see how it affects the plants. It seems like all that ice might push the plants right out of the soil, but so far they still seem to be firmly rooted.

Vickie after this cold winter the only rust you will get this year is from new plants coming in with it. It is a good idea to quarantine new plants from rust prone area for the first year before planting them with the other plants. My humble opinion of course.

Vickie, have you always had a heavy winter leaf mulch on your daylilies? That could contribute to rust overwintering in a borderline climate where it wouldn't otherwise, by protecting the infected leaf bases from being killed by cold. Mike is right, if all the daylily leaves are killed to the ground this winter, rust can't survive.

I have good luck with wintering evergreens. Do tend to buy from areas with similar zones. Currently temps are crazy low, but snow cover is 2-3'. Usually snow cover is good. If I were further south and loved my evergreens I would mulch heavily as soon as the ground froze. If snow cover is a question do it anyway. Catch is to remove mulch when it warms as mulch will kill plants too. No easy solutions.

I am glad to know that not many daylilies are lost to cold winter temps. Sue, I did not realize that daylily hardiness is not subject to a daylily's foliage type. Thanks for that clarification. However, we are going to get an extended warm up after this arctic weather passes. So the daylilies are going to get a thawing period. Some of my new plants (mostly evergreens) suffered greatly from rust this past summer so they are going into this winter rather weakened. I just hope they will make out ok. I guess I will find out what I lose come this spring.

Terry, I am so happy and hopeful to hear that you lose only a few daylilies a winter in spite of the fact that they are subjected to many freeze and thaw periods. Diana, Elena, Sue P., Julie, and Larry, hope that all of our daylilies esp. the new ones and seedlings will come through this winter alive.

On the positive side as Vickie noted, there is a great probability that his cold will kill off all the rust spores in our garden. That will be a tremendous relief for me.

Karen and Vickie ( and everyone else worried about cold, wet weather) I live in the UK and we have VERY unpredictable weather, I have only kept daylilies for 10-11 years but we have had a couple of winters at -25°C in that time and this year we have swung from 8°C to -15°C and back again within a week, now we are at 1°C and supposed to go to -7 or thereabouts overnight. I keep all daylily foliage types and haven't lost any yet even during this part of Britains 'monsoon summer' last year when we had constant torrential rain from May until September.

I know everyone has different conditions but hopefully everyone's different experiences of cold weather on here will provide some reassurance.

Sue, I did not realize that daylily hardiness is not subject to a daylily's foliage

The two things are inherited separately, as you can see by those of us in severely cold climates who grow all daylily foliage habits. But one thing to bear in mind is that as long as people in warm winter climates prefer evergreens because then they have foliage year round, while some in cold winter climates prefer deciduous daylilies because they look nicer when they emerge in spring, there will tend to be an association simply because the deciduous daylilies are being tested for cold hardiness while the evergreens are not (unless trialed elsewhere). Of course it works vice versa, the deciduous daylilies are often not being tested for heat tolerance.

Thus there may well be an apparent association, contributed to by people's hybridizing preferences. That's why it is safest to buy daylilies, of any foliage type, that have been tested in a similar climate to one's own, unless one wants to be the one to do the testing

Perhaps there are daylilies that lose their cold acclimation (which has to be re-established before each winter) quickly and thus do less well where there are freeze/thaw cycles than in climates like mine where the ground remains frozen throughout winter. There are also daylilies registered as evergreen in the "south" that set resting dormant buds in cold climates. Whether these evergreens were actually dormant but kept their living green foliage in the warmer areas is something I've wondered about.

THanks Nikki for your reassurance. I will surely take notes about how the daylilies fare come spring for future reference. It's been years since my area gets down to -1F.

Sue, I have learned so much from your posts. Sometimes I tend to assume things to be true when they are not like in this case - that evergreens are automatically less hardy.

sooby said:Vickie, have you always had a heavy winter leaf mulch on your daylilies? That could contribute to rust overwintering in a borderline climate where it wouldn't otherwise, by protecting the infected leaf bases from being killed by cold. Mike is right, if all the daylily leaves are killed to the ground this winter, rust can't survive.

Sue, a lot of my garden did get winter leaf mulch from that large oak tree. So maybe that plus some warmer winters is why the rust over-wintered. I am looking forward to seeing healthier looking foliage this year. Just a little concerned about the drastic fluctuation in temps.

Interesting to read the comments about mulch, I don't mulch my pots in the sense of putting a protecting layer over tne soil as we have a massive slug/snail problem here with all the wet weather we get. So my pots are left unprotected over winter. Maybe not mulching lets the water drain away from the crown?

In Spring (usually late March/April) I buy a bag of 'Muckers Mulch' which is forest/woodland humus (rotted leaves/bark etc) which I use as a soil conditioner by removing the top couple of inches of potting soil/compost in the pots and replacing it with a mix of fresh potting soil, muckers mulch and alfalfa pellets.

I definitely agree with Sooby that it is constant Freeze/Thaw that does the most damage. I am in USDA Zone 7a/b where this problem is probably the most problematic. It is not just the Winters that are Up/Down, but Spring, as well. I used to lose many plants, not just daylilies, each year. I have reduced losses to just a few each year by using mulch applied in the Fall, and applying frost protection cloth (Reemay) to all my beds. I placed 3' stakes pushed 6 to 9 inches into the soil at 3' intervals to keep the cloth just above the developing leaves. This has dramatically reduced the damage from Late Spring freezes and made for much healthier plants with more blooms. It is a lot of work, but well worth the effort---especially if you are in a Zone that routinely has this problem. I am a displaced CheeseHead (WI) and seldom had problems with growing when I was there. We always had snowcover which not only "mulched" the plants, but mitigated to a certain amount the Freeze/Thaw cycles in the Spring. It has taken me quite a few years, and many losses of plants to come to that point here.
Sooby is also right when she said that it also depends on the vigor of the individual plant. I have had the most losses with plants from Florida and Deep South growers. After many years of selecting plants for flower characteristics and/or vigor in their own climate conditions, they are producing plants that grow/bloom great for them---but not me. This is something that R W Munson warned about in his book. Now, if I get a daylily that is Evr, and developed in Fla, I place it close to the house. The warmth given off from the house has made a difference in survival for me because it effectively changes the micro-climate to something more like USDA Zone 8. They still need the clothe cover in the Spring---mainly because they are the first daylilies to begin growth then. If, after a few years, a cultivar shows that it can do well---I may move it away from the house to see how it does. If it continues to do well, it stays where it is, and the place near the house is replaced with another "test" subject. If we would breed for climactic hardiness as hard as we breed for the "pretty face", I am sure that we eventually would not need to do all this work to enjoy our favorite flower.

Surprised to hear that winter/spring loss is such a problem in zone 7A. I think that in recent years, climate change has produced more fluctuation in temperatures, and late winter/spring fluctuations have definitely affected your zone. I agree that the North/South hybridizing divide has become more marked over time, but am surprised to hear that you have many of the same problems as farther north. Of course, I suspect you grow some cultivars we wouldn't even consider farther north.