some of my lilies still have green stems, a little ratty looking, but still green. would it hurt to cut them off in sep? These are from LO types.
lily stems still green
If you do, do it it in the dead of the night and make sure your surveillance camera is off. You don't want the Lily Police to pay you a visit.
I like to leave them through the winter. It makes it easy to look for in the spring. The dried stems are then easily pulled. But then again I am sure our winters are different from yours.
Generally speaking though it is best to let the green stems help nourish the bulbs for the next season of bloom.
it drives me crazy b/c while they are green, they do lean, so it just looks sad. But now that I have a feel for the lilies that do well in my garden, I will let not disturb the stems and let them be.
When they get really gross I start whacking them. Once the leaves are gone and parts of them are turning brown I tend to have at it. That said, I do feed my lilies something like Holland Bulb Booster in the fall (9-9-6) and a weak liquid fertilizer in the spring.
To know where they are, I bought a bunch of chopsticks, and put one beside each bulb. I got them from World Market. The great thing about doing that is that in the spring you can spot bulbs that were too weak to emerge (sometimes they get overshadowed) and then I can move them to a better location or a pot.
This message was edited Sep 7, 2015 6:18 PM
DonnaMack, that's a really smart idea with the chopsticks. You can also use bamboo skewers and find them real cheap too.
that is a great idea as I had bulbs trying to come up thru a big plant that I accidentally planted in the vicinity. wondering how many I've lost that way