I've been given some ditchlilies which I was looking for. How deep should I plant them? I had them many years ago when I lived in my former home but can't remember how deep we planted them. Do I go by same depth as other daylilies? Should I cut back the leaves/foliage like you do on Iris. Should I put them in a bucket of water and soak them before planting them?
How deep do I plant ditchlilies?
I'm definitely no expert but ditch lilies are pretty hardy. I've had some that I was moving to a new location but then it got too hot and the plants have been baking in a plastic nursery container waiting for me to put them in the ground. During 95 degree weather the plant had two blooms on it. So my answer to you is, I don't think it matters regarding the planting depth. Just make sure you want them because once they are in they are not coming out easily. I've inherited a stand of them from my next door neighbor (growing under cedar fence) but I don't really mind as they grow well and choke out anything else in areas that I don't tend.
just through them on the ground THEY WILL GROW took me all most 20 years to get rid of them LOL
good luck
What is a ditch lily??
Something you really don't want unless it is growing in a ditch for erosion. They put shoots out several inches from the clump. This is the triple version, flore pleno, I think. Took years to get rid of them ~
Good heavens. it is so pretty. I could definitely see me digging some up, if we had any which we don't, and taking them home. scary. course then we have that miserable snake weed or horsetail some call it.
I have them migrating into my gardens from a neighboe also. I use round-up on the emerging shoots in the spring.
They are more daylily than lilliums.
Everyone is right, be sure you put them where you will never have to dig them up.
Not a Lilium at all, it's a daylily ~ Hemerocallis, which will probably survive a nuclear holocost along with the cockroaches.
So Pippi, if we haven't sufficiently scared you, go ahead and plant them with the crowns just below ground level and no special treatment. After all, I had a clump flourish having been forgotten in a black plastic bag, in the garage, for 18 months....
I can't imagine that between the two of you there is anything someone could ask that you wouldn't know. And I love the echo effect! lol
Moby is 100% right. They are horrid and not the sign of a good gardener. GE is right, too, when she describes how they creep underground and rob the garden of true beauty. They are said to possibly contain a virus that could infect not only your own daylilies but that of your neighbors - another good reason to avoid planting them.
I just had to dig up a vast amount of my garden to get rid of them and now have a vacancy I can't even use since more ditch daylilies may erupt from below so it will stay vacant for two more years - what a PITA they are! So Gloria is also right - it takes years to eliminate them.
Making it worse - I didn't plant them. They came from an unscrupulous dealer who put the names of real cultivars on them!
I wish him deer, groundhogs, voles and moles along with red lily beetles, cutworms, hornworms, earwigs, slugs and any pest I haven't mentioned!
Man 'o man I dont want to be on your bad side Pirl.
The Ditch lilies here were planted to solve a odd space problem.They just created another one as far as I can see.
They were here 16 years before I moved in so I just manage whats comming into my garden. The rest of them are in no-mans-land between 2 properties.
Funny, GE! I don't even want to be on my own bad side.
That odd space problem would have been better off with cement painted green.
We do enough hard work in the gardens so living with a plant that's a pest and keeps on multiplying when we'd opt to have it dead.
I gotta admit they look wonderful backlit in a country ditch.
Yes, beautiful in a ditch and that's where they belong but not in a garden.
I've used ditch lilies in different ways. Thought these pictures would give some people some ideas. I've used them as a filler, where we didn't have to mow the grass or as a led into the woods around my house. I will say I have to agree with a lot of the posts they can be invasive.
Picture I
Picture 2
Picture 3
Picture 4
Very well done, Debbie. They are fine when they are not mixed with any treasured or valuable plants.
"would have been better off with cement painted green."
LOL. Arlene, you absolutely crack me up.
Mary - do you remember Horn & Hardart's ad that mentioned, "Less work for mother"? They were NOT talking about ditch daylilies in the midst of a field of beautiful daylilies that we either purchased or that I hybridized myself! They're just so wrong!
The white X shows where it was but many more plants were behind it going all the way to the rear path through that garden.
These runners are how the miserable plant spreads.
Not familiar with Horn & Hardart. But I did get DH a sleeveless t-shirt that proudly states, "I got these muscles from digging the wife's daylilies."
Pirl..did you ever live in Philadelphia? When you mentioned Horn & Harnett, I thought you might be from Philly. I remember visiting my Aunts in Philly and we'd go to that cafeteria and I remember the food being behind those little doors..Wasn't it like a food vending machine? Did they have a H&H in New York?
Moby, you can probably google Horne & Harnett and it will explain what it was. Before fast food was introduced.
I never lived anywhere other than Long Island, New York. They did have the Horn & Hardart automats in NYC.
http://www.theautomat.net/
Have a question about Ditch Lillies. I have a place in my yard along a wooden privacy fence. Behind the fence is concrete. There are lots of trees there and nothing grows for about a 2' wide space the length of the fence. It is just dirt. Would they grow/bloom in the shade in that space? I don't want to do a lot of watering there as it is a slope and would like to keep the dirt from washing out when it rains.
Thanks!
I'm sure they will grow there, but may not flower well.
Thanks for the input. That's what I had thought too. At least they would hold the dirt in place. :-)