Daylily season in Vermont is upon us and as I write, the rain continues to fall. We were in a severe drought two weeks ago and have caught up to appropriate water levels in much of the east all in a few days. Monthly total rainfall for July has exceeded 6" and here at Vermont Flower Farm and Gardens there's a puddle from a poorly ditched State highway culvert that's diverting water onto one of our fields. The mallard ducks are loving it this morning but for me, not so much.
When our daylilies flower heavily like they do right now, we try to deadhead them every day. Some people enjoy doing this as part of their daily routine while others find it a cumbersome, hand staining nuisance...... so..... why do we deadhead thousands of daylilies? There are a few good reasons.
Some daylilies hold spent flowers for 2-3 days. These are generally more modern hybrids named tetraploids which are bigger in all respects. Bigger blooms hold more water and when they pass, it takes longer for them to dehydrate and fall from the flower scape. The name daylily suggests a flower that opens and closes all in 16 hours of a day. The "one day only" per bloom plant--a daylily. Daylilies have many, many buds and blooms however, so they bloom on and on for several weeks until the final blooms are spent. The first blooms to open are the largest the plant will produce for the season and as blooms pass on each day and other blooms open they tend to be smaller. When a plant is registered with the American Hemerocallis (Daylily) Society, the bloom size is represented by the size of the initial (larger) blooms.
Removing spent blooms will prevent them from setting seed and will make subsequent blooms larger since the plant is not taking water and nutrients to make seeds. It will also make the plant much more attractive without spent blooms hanging on. It keeps spent blooms off the ground so your garden is much more attractive too.
Probably the largest incentive to deadhead involves insects. Many insects love to find their way inside a bloom, even a bloom that is closing after it has flowered. Insects use the flower as a moist, warm place to lay eggs and generate more insects. If insects lay eggs inside blooms that will soon drop off the plant and fall to earth, the eggs are likely to mature more successfully. The heat of the earth warms the spent bloom, and as the bloom oxidizes and decomposes, that heat helps the eggs hatch. Picking the spent blooms before any of this can occur minimizes insects such as the tarnished plant bug, which love daylilies.
The final part about deadheading that bothers folks is their hands. Despite the way nitrile gloves have escalated in price because of Covid, we always wear them to keep our hands from staining. If you don't like plastic gloves (some people are allergic to them), then you can remove stains, especially purple stains from your hands with lemon juice. I always buy the generic brand and have it around in case I forget the gloves or run out of them. Over time you will learn which daylilies stain the most and you'll react appropriately. Large-flowered daylilies that are the darkest colors such as Persian Ruby, Ruby Spider or Wayside King Royale are examples that stain a bunch but remain our favorites.
Have other daylily questions? Email us at vermontflowerfarm@outlook.com or stop by for a visit at 2263 US Route 2, Marshfield, Vermont where the fields are ablaze with color and we still have thousands of 6 quart pots packed with every color daylily but blue. Come see!
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