In all the plant world there is one flower known for its eyes, edges, and every so often you find some wonderful chicken fat edges. What is this wonder of the plant world? This wonderful flower is none other than the wonderful daylily.

Daylilies and the sun go hand in hand. Some of the darker daylilies cannot take the full daytime sun but they still need at least six hours of sunlight. They are very forgiving plants, they love the heat, and will even take a little dryness if they are planted in the right areas. Daylilies will grow in any soil but I have seen here that they spread faster in soils with more sand and stay in smaller, tighter clumps if they are in clay soils. Daylilies love compost and this is the only thing that I give my daylilies to feed them. They love the extra food and I don’t have to worry about adding chemicals to my yard.

Keep the soil moist in the blooming season, but not overly wet. Daylilies that stay too dry will not put on a show of blooms but, on the other hand, daylilies that sit in water will rot in the soil. The best way to do this is to care for the soil first with lots of compost or manure in the soil to help it drain faster. Take care of your soil also by placing mulch over the soil after you plant the daylilies. Mulch will keep the weeds down and help to keep the soil moist.

Weeds are a major factor when you are dealing with daylilies. Some weeds might find the daylily patch the perfect place to hide. One major offender in some areas is Bermuda Grass which, in a mature bed, cannot be hoed or killed out but must be pulled. Still, once established in a large area, you will not have to worry about very many weeds.

Daylilies come in all colors except all blue and all white. The color of the bloom will differ in garden to garden and even from one section of the garden to the next. A bloom that looks strongly white in the show garden might look yellow, tan, or even pink in your garden. The designs in the flowers and strong mixes of colors available in daylilies make them a wonderful plant to have and grow in the garden.

A word of caution should be mentioned about daylily seeds. On many well-known auctions you can buy seeds of great daylilies. What is not said in these auctions is that the seeds will never grow into the same plant as the mother plant. Planting seeds of daylilies will give you wonderful new plants that might bloom stunning flowers that everyone wants or might give you the ugly duckling of the daylily world. If you are looking for a daylily, it is well worth the effort to go out and buy the plant you are looking for rather than growing from seed.

Daylilies are a wonderful addition to the garden and it seems that every gardener is bitten by the daylily bug at least once in their lifetime. Though people don’t always grow them by the hundreds, there are those who get addicted to daylilies and dedicate their whole garden to growing these wonderful garden plants. To learn more visit the Daylily Forum here at Dave’s Garden.