Telmarc
Gardens
|
Gardens
|
|
|
These are notes from the Garden and may be of interest and possible use to other Daylily Gardeners. December 23, 2007 Well, we are at the end of another year, but the seedlings from our 2007 crosses are now beginning to arise. We are now off again. For those of us who hybridize all but mid November to mid December is the off season. From now on we watch, we water, we feed, and we protect the little things, especially from the squirrels who seem to like basking on my seed beds under the lamps and over the heating pads. How they get in I will never know. But this year we have put netting over them seeds and hopefully will get some protection, and even provide a nicer and dryer bed for the squirrels.
The seeds are bursting forth just after seven days of being in their beds. We have well over 1500 seeds in the beds and they are treated with an anti fungal as well as a quick grow fertilizer. Then we cap them until they come out, then remove the caps and let them grow under the netting.
The one week growth is an average of seven out of 72 seed units. This is typical for the daylily. Full germination will take about four weeks. Anything not germinated by that time will most likely never germinate.
So Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all who have been reading this. And, Oh yes, there is another squirrel whose story will appear soon, it is Seamus the Squirrel, for it has been this fat and furry creature who has been relaxing on my beds. So Merry Christmas to you Seamus, to you Antnee, you Mr. Red Bottom, and all the others who have befriended me in the past years!
December 15, 2007 We planted almost 1,500 seeds today after three months of cold stratifying. The results below show the distribution of Number of Seeds per pod. There were an average of 12.66 seed per pod. In the graph below we seed a very long tail distribution. The long tails are dominated by crosses with species plants, which almost always yield high seed count when crossed with hybrids.
Our next step is to grow the seedlings till mid March, when the go out for hardening off, and then in mid April they go into pots. We have snow cover now, and have had it for almost two weeks, average temp has been around 29 F at 8 AM. The pots from 04, 05, and 06 are wrapped in plastic netting and then stuffed with leaves for insulation. We had tested a group last winter and they performed well. This will be the first major tests for large scale potted plants. October 18, 2007 Fall has been quite benign so far, no frosts, and we still have H flava re-blooming. The samples taken today are shown below:
The close-up of the pollen is shown below. The flower is quite fragrant but the scapes on the re-blooms are short. We also have second re-bloom of the Stella, first time we have ever observed this effect.
Below are the buds. Note the wide and somewhat short bracts at the base of the non branched buds.
October 1, 2007 The following Charts depict some interesting results. We have plotted the absolute number and percents for; crosses, seeds, seedlings, year 1 plants, year 2 plants, and introductions. Typically we get 10 seeds per pod, thus 250 pods would yield 2500 seeds, but not seedlings.
The following is the percent chart.
September 18, 2007 We have cut down all of the plants and cleaned up the soil in preparation for the oncoming winter. The temperature has already dipped into the upper 30s so we can expect a frost in a couple of weeks. We have one plant, a Sara's Wink X Tixie which was done in 2005 which has an interesting re-bloom. On June 17, 2007 we obtained the following bloom:
Then on September 18, 2007 we obtained the following bloom on the same plant:
This now has an eyezone, faint but attractive. It has two branches, and three buds per branch, is very fragrant and is 25" tall and 3" flower. We will look at this again next year. The lateness of the re-bloom is amazing. We have Sandra Elizabeth being the latest bloom, which is the end of August. This is a strong and aggressive bloom. As with any new flower we must wait at least until the second year to see if it repeats.
August 12, 2007 We are down to a few last minute crosses, Sandra Elizabeth and Krakatoa Lava being the stalwarts. The following is a list for possible introduction next year. There are some interesting crosses with species here.
August 4, 2007 The season is ending and the seed pods are forming. I have shown eight species and their pods below.
August 1, 2007 The following are some detailed descriptions of H coreana and H altissima. We are nearing the end of the season. We have been battling the H fulva Europa infestation and despite double digging the display beds they seem to come back again and again. It is no wonder that they are now deemed invasive in many states.
July 30, 2007 We now have several H coreana. They are shown below. We also have H thunbergii from an alternative source. They bloomed three weeks latter than Apps.
The flower is shown to the left. There is no branching but the flower is not sessile. There is considerable budding and the flower is a yellow orange color.
The flower opens up fully and shows strong structure and display characteristics.
The mid scape has the characteristic bracts which are generally several inches in length. The bracts are thin and are very pointed in a gradual manner.
The budding is shown in a closer view to the left. Note we see about five buds per branch at the end and two divisions of sets of five.
July 28, 2007 We have been managing the daylilies in New Hampshire and they bloom about three weeks latter than in northern New Jersey and six weeks latter than southern New Jersey. Again we are interested in the issue of flower bloom. We know that it is a combination of temperature and daylight. Stay tuned, we will do the analysis this fall. Below shows the New Hampshire garden, although latter to bloom it grows at 2 to 3 times the rate here in northern New Jersey.
July 25, 2007 The following picture is of four flowers from citrina, aurantiaca, fulva (species NOT Europa), and hakuensis.
Note the branching. H aurantiaca is clearly reddish in tint and H citrina is closing from the night before. H hakuensis is branched.
Here is my standard altissima. It has the tint in the center but it blooms at the end of July and it is 6' tall. I moved a cluster last fall into two locations. I have only one scape. This plant is very sensitive to moving and hopefully we will get many scapes again next year.
July 22, 2007 Today the Garden State Daylily Growers went to Apps for the last time. He closes next week on the 29th. Dr. Apps was kind enough to take the entire membership on a complete tour of the fields and hybridizing areas. Shown below are some of the highlights.
July 18, 2007 The following are H Coreana buds. They are just coming out on several species plants and we had one flower today but it was badly beaten up by the very heavy rains.
Note the large bracts on the H coreana. These seem to be typical of the species. The ones which will bloom this year are their first yea as compared to others which we have. It may take a few years to see normal growth but the characteristics seem stable.
Note also on the bud there are noticeable bracts as well. Here we see a non-branched set of buds, about an average of four per scape.
Here we see all of the buds and that there appears to be no branching either.
We have also seen our normal H altissima start to have full scapes. It may take another three weeks before we see the standard bloom. The Olallie plants are clearly not altissima. The Olallie plants were very costly and were in our opinion the wrong plant. I am trying to identify it now. July 16, 2007 We have had the Open House this past weekend and we hosted the Garden State Daylilies Growers and the Florham Park Garden Club as well as others. The weather was superb and all seemed to enjoy the display which is slowly approaching a peak.
July 12, 2007 We have also been taking pictures of pods and we present a few here.
This is H citrina pod. Note the dark end of the pod. We have been told that H citrina is self sterile. I have not been able to confirm this yet but will try this summer. H citrina grows very aggressively in this garden environment.
This is H flava the lemon daylily. It is also an oblate looking pod with very rough texture on the surface.
This is H minor. It is a very long pod and hangs on the thin drooping scape.
This is H altissima (Olallie) and we provide this here solely for latter comparison. Our older H altissimas are now sending out scapes and as usual and as with true altissimas they are quite long and will be in excess of 6 feet in height. Nothing should be observed from this alleged altissima until we can validate it after a second season.
July 8, 2007 The Open House will be in a week and we present here a preview of the display garden. There are still many buds and about only 40% of the plants have flowered. We have added a few new ones from Apps. There are over 500 hybrids now in the collection.
July 7, 2007 Purchased many items yesterday from Apps for hybridizing. Also bought out his species since he is retiring at then end of this season. He will be sorely missed. One was H thunbergerii as shown below. I have had some of these before but not quite like this. I trust Apps for his identification, probably one of the best in the US. Note it is highly branched and a bright yellow flower. It blooms early in Apps' area, which is 3 weeks earlier than where we are in northern New Jersey, Zone 5 versus Zone 6-7.
July 5, 2007
This is a cross from 2004. It is 7" across and is a magnificent 4N flower. It just bloomed today and was crossed in 2004 on July 4th. Some of the other older crosses may be kept but many as usual will see the Mountains in New Hampshire.
July 2, 2007 We have been collecting specimens on inflorescences of Hemerocallis and the following table presents some;
June 22, 2007
Finally we had a deer attack last night. They jumped over the fence and played havoc with Hostas and the wild 3N flavas. I had sprayed but did not do so for over a week and it rained heavily three times. The front unprotected by fence garden is sprayed with a different spray every other day and the 300 pound rodents have not touched it in three years. Thus, no matter what we recommend a rotating spray. We use Hinder, Deer Off, Liquid Fence, and a collection of other concoctions. There is no one sustainable solution. June 12, 2007 We have plotted the Average Temperature and Rainfall for the past seventeen years. Interesting, no temperature increase at all but dramatic variation in annual rainfall which has as significant an impact on flowering.
We have also plotted Bloom Excess time, which is actual time less average versus the Temperature as shown below:
Note that in the above we have a negative slope showing a shorter bloom time, namely earlier as a function of temperature. Thus we would argue that bloom time is a potential predictor of average temperature. We have done the same but now as a function of rain in inches as shown below:
The relationship is not close in this analysis. Although the more rain the earlier the bloom time the reliability of this fit is very poor. June 11, 2007 The daylilies are starting to bloom. We have obtained the first Stout plant today, Buckeye.
June 9, 2007 We have been watching the two species received from Apps last year. They are H flava and H minor (Siberia) The following is as of today.
June 7, 2007 The Canary in the Mine Shaft ("How well is it doing") Having data on bloom time for fifteen years now I decided to do a simple analysis of the global warming phenomenon. The premise is that if bloom time at a certain location for a certain flower is influenced primarily by total heat input, namely the average temperature over a period of time, assuming the daylight hours are the same, one would expect to see a shift to earlier bloom times in a wide selection of what I have called sentinel flowers. A fifteen years window, given the warming which has been predicted would be more than adequate. I have seen no research on this issue which surprises me. One always looks for a long term average predictor. For example in medicine for Type 2 Diabetes one monitors glycosolated hemeglobin, HgA1B, which is a sixty day average of blood glucose. It is the medical analog to bloom time. Thus I chose a few plants which I have monitored bloom time for. I plotted bloom time by year as shown below. One can then model the bloom time as a function of average temperature per year. Namely: Bloom Time (Days from January 1 of that year) = m Average Temp (for that year) + b Performing a regression analysis one looks for the slope. Namely, we assume we have constant m and b, so that the slope is dependent on an average temperature. The chart below shows this for several hybrids. If the slope is positive then the average temperature is increasing. If the slope is negative then the average temperature is decreasing.
We did then did this analysis for many hybrids and we obtained the rate of change of bloom time in days for each year. What we obtained was the chart shown below:
Here the plants are named and the y axis is the slope measured in days of bloom change per 365 days. Thus a negative value of -0.001 is a shortening in 0.365 days per year in bloom time and a positive value +0.001 is a lengthening of the bloom time of 0.365 days per year. Thus we see above that Superchild is having an earlier bloom time over the past fifteen years of a significant amount, -0.003 per year, which is almost a day a year! We then performed a statistical analysis on the slopes and within a 95% confidence interval the average slope is shown below:
Thus we do NOT see any significant effects of a warming on the basis of flower time. This is based on a large sample of fifteen years duration. In fact we see a slight shortening of the time, albeit small, thus implying a warming but not a very significant one. It would be interesting to see if this can be applied in a broader manner. June 2, 2007 The H flava from Apps bloomed today. It is shown below. May has been very hot with several days well above 90 F.
May 28, 2007 We now have all three species in bloom. I have tried to compare them for easy identification. First is the H dumortieri species as shown below:
Note the following: 1. on the pictures bellow one can see that the back of the sepals we see the dark reddish brown tint. The petals are pure yellow. 2. The buds are clusters with bracts at the base. 3. The H dumortieri seems to bloom a week after the H middendorfii. The H middendorfii however is a great grower from seeds and flowers now in large clumps. Now we have also tried to compare the flowers.
We have also seen our large patch of H fulva in bud, and this is early for them. We also have H minor from Siberia courtesy of Darrell Apps in bud and H flava is also budding. Finally we have June Wine in bud as well. Generally we get Orange Prelude the first week in June in bloom but no sign as of yet. May 24, 2007
The dumortieri seen below also show several characteristics. First there are bracts mid scape as shown on bottom right. Second, the buds are sessile, no branching, and the buds show the reddish tint as well. It is very prominent just before flowering.
The minor has a very slight branching and is not clearly sessile. The flower opens greatly at night and closes down in the day time. We notice only two buds per scape and the strong yellow is very attractive.
May 23, 2007 H middendorfii bloomed on 21 May 2004, a full week latter than in 2006. The blooms are shown below. The flower is a chrome yellow.
The flowers are shown above and to the left. The chrome yellow is quite prominent. The flowers are sessile, all clumped to the end of the scape, there is no branching. There are small bracts at the base of the buds and three to four flowers per scape. These plants have all been grown from seed. The H middendorfii seems to grow the best from seed of all the species. I have been able to grow hundreds of these plants and we are now testing them in New Hampshire. The New Hampshire plants are about a week to ten days behind these. However the other New Hampshire plants are three to four weeks behind New Jersey. This may imply that the Hemerocallis is more light dependent and not as reliant on heat as many other species. An interesting observation.
May 20, 2007
The H minor bloomed today about a week latter than usual. Again it was the exceedingly cold winter. The flower has a clear yellow like color, there is no clear branching and the leaves are quite narrow and grass like. This is the first species to bloom. We have transplanted a large collection of minor to a naturalizing and species display garden and they do not seem to bloom. H minor seems to be a bit fragile in its ability to move. We have planted these in our New Hampshire gardens and will see how well they do in Zone 4.
May 17, 2007 Buds from the species plants are shown below. It is useful to notice the difference between species at this early stage. There are four species in bud; minor, dumortieri, middendorfii, and minor.
H middendorfii There s a mild reddish tint but not as dark as dumortieri and the bud is longer.
This bud has a strong reddish tint as would be expected. Compare this to middendorfii which has little if any coloring.
H minor The bud is very long and narrow with no noticeable bract at the base.
H flava The bud has a large bract at the base and is appearing as a single bud at this time. This is a flava from Apps which is of Siberian origin. We have not seen this bloom yet.
May 14, 2007 The
first bloom of the year is H Elfin (F1) which was grown from seed obtained from
H Elfin at the New York Botanical Garden. This is the sentinel bloom we see
every yea We have also seen the loss of several hybrids over the winter. Glimmerglass and Now and Zen have not survived and Ed Brown looks very weak. We would not recommend these in Zone 5 and above, even in northern Zone 6 it is questionable. Our lows this year were 4 F and there was a six week period of deep freeze. The frost line exceeded 8" when measured.
May 13, 2007
|
|
NOTICE
Send mail to
tmcgarty@telmarcgardens.com with
questions or comments about this web site.
|
The
garden is starting to bloom. The H citrina from Olallie Nursery is blooming.
This is quite early for Citrina since most of the one we have had bloom in mid
July. However it has all the characteristics of the citrina except for an early
bloom. We have had less than satisfactory plants from Olallie, we lost the
minors, and a few others. Also the plant size when shipped was small. Best still
is from Apps and Manatawny Creek Farm. Manatawny is especially generous and
their plants come is great condition. We pick the Apps plants up directly from
his place in southern New Jersey. Since this is his last year it is really worth
a trip no matter how far!
We
also have Mikado, the Stout hybrid. It is yellow with an eyezone. Other than the
bloom time I cannot distinguish it from Buckeye another Stout hybrid.
H dumortieri has bloomed. It is shown to the left.
Note the dark reddish brown sepals and the chrome petals. The difference between
dumortieri and middendorfii should be clear with this one characteristic.
Also we see that H minor is really a night bloomer and is
quite fragrant. The plant
is a very sensitive bloomer, just a few scapes per plant and the plant does not
seem to propagate as well as others. We can also see that there are just two
buds per scape, with a small bract and the buds are fairly sessile. I have
noticed that it blooms at the end of the day and the peak openness is just after
sunset. I have been hybridizing these as well.
H dumortieri
r, it blooms before any other of the plants. dumortieri and
middendorfii are in bud as is minor. We expect the species to bloom shortly.
Due to the excessively cold winter we are seeing a delay of 7-10 days in normal
blooming. So much for global warming.
We have used pots for our seedlings this year for the first time. The results
seem spectacular. We set the seedlings in early December inside on hot beds and
let the grow till April 1, then set them outside to harden off. Then in early
May we set them in pots. The posts allow denser planting, better control, easier
fertilization and weed management. We will report on the results as we progress.
We had over-wintered some plants in pots last winter with success so we believe
we can do it with the seedlings, as long as we maintain wind damage to roots. We
accomplish that through packing them with oak leaves as an insulation.
The
individual pot growth has been quite good. We have found that we have more than
doubled the rate of growth of the plant in handling them in this manner. The
only risk we have is from squirrels who look for seeds in the pots. Early on we
had to use a light plastic mesh covering which we have now removed. That
approach seems to work quite well. Root growth in the pots, which are using a
potting mix, is significant. We use plastic pots to delimit water loss. The pots
can be watered every other day if there is no rain. However we have had a wet
spring, with 14" of rain in April, four times the normal.