Hi there!
Went to check my DLs and decided to take some pics to show you. I'm suspecting chlorosis. I found some leaves are total white at the bottom.

I have huge quantities of limescale in tap water, I don't know if it comes into facts.
I have a NPK fertilizer 14-7-10 which contains iron and other minerals.
I never gave it to my DLs. Do you think it can help?
Is it chlorosis really?
Thanks in advance!

cybersix
Is it chlorosis really?
http://www.daylilies.org/ahs_d...
The causes include incorrect soil pH, nutrient imbalance, unsuitable soil moisture levels, root problems, overfertilization, disease, insects, and herbicide injury.
Over fertilization can be a problem as well as nutrient imbalance, so your fertilizer might help and it might not, it could make the problem worse. I would try it on one plant and see how it reacts.

This article on leaf analysis by Scott Elliott might help you narrow down the issue.
http://nwgds.org/Leaf.pdf

The top picture is interveinal chlorosis and that could be related to high pH inducing either iron and/or manganese deficiency. I'm assuming this is on the youngest centre leaves primarily? The other two pictures aren't chlorosis. I've seen something like the middle one, it may be insect damage but unless you see it on a lot of leaves I wouldn't worry about it. The last one looks like variegation - is it the only leaf in the clump that is doing this?

Edited - forgot to add that you can temporarily lower the soil pH around the affected plant with one teaspoon of vinegar in one litre of water poured around the plant once a week and see if that fixes the problem. If it does then you may need to look for a more long term solution but try this treatment - only on one or two plants to start with in case there's no benefit or worse! Don't make the solution any stronger than that.

Thanks everyone.
@Jessie6162 many thanks for that link I will print it and check more carefully the leaves.

@sooby, I have to check again because I can't remember if the leaves are in the center or not, now it's almost midnight and I can't see well outside. The last picture is one leaf on Stella de Oro, it was not the only one, I took off three and every one of them had white points similar to the second picture on tips. From the picture it's not clear but the last piece of the leaves (the piece coming out of the fan) is totally white. I read that chlorosis can stop chlorophyll production thus leaves becoming white.

The soil is almost all like clay, when I plant and some time in the year I add common garden soil, but basically it's clay, and for what I know it's full of earthworms down there (I didn't check recently, but I took of a bit of soil for a small pot and weeks after I found earthworms in the pot).
I will try with the fertilizer, I never fertilize the DLs and this summer I watered a lot (compared to the past year) with tap water, full of limescale (I filter it for drinking but I can't for watering).

The reason I asked if it was the centre newest leaves (for the first picture only) is because interveinal chlorosis is typically from an iron and/or manganese deficiency or a magnesium deficiency. If it is iron or manganese deficiency it will affect the newest leaves, i.e the new emerging central ones, first and in daylilies leaves may also become paler at their bases.. If it is magnesium it usually affects the older leaves first. With the history it's more likely to be iron and/or manganese deficiency because they are caused by high pH (which would be expected with the lime in the water). Some daylilies seem particularly susceptible to this and it seems to be a fairly common problem. Magnesium deficiency is more likely in more acidic conditions.

A typical fertilizer will not help because even if it does contain iron and manganese they may, depending on the form they are in, also be made unavailable by the pH (if the nitrogen source is an acidifying one it may help somewhat). The deficiency is not usually because of a shortage of iron or manganese in the soil but because the pH makes the nutrients unavailable to the plant. In the picture in the Daylily Dictionary that Seedfork posted a link to, that was manganese deficiency caused by a lime application and it was later corrected with sulfur to lower the pH. Iron chlorosis can progress to almost all white although it starts off just being pale between the veins with the veins still green, as in your first picture. However it doesn't look like the other two pictures.

Sooby is right, you have to get the pH right (6.5 - 7 would be ideal). You can typically get a pH test kit from a garden outlet or hardware store garden center. I have hard clay soil in my yard, and I amend with lots of organic matter like mushroom compost and pine fines mixed in deep. My daylilies have performed much better since doing this.

here I am, sorry for delay!
The interveinal chlorosis is in centre leaves, the youngest, and on every DL no one excluded.. So it should be iron or manganese deficiency, but now I'm afraid I can't really distinguish one deficiency from another
All the young leaves are somewhat floppy, they are not hard, they bend too easily.
While I was at it I took some other pics, if you could tell me what you are seeing or point me in the right direction, I'll be glad because I really don't know a thing on gardening.
I'm including pics of different damages (I see them like damages), including one of the scape with a seed pod that's browing (it started yellow, now it's half green and half brown). The pod is almost one month old (settled on 10, july).
I will try to test soil ph with a home made test, tomorrow in the morning, before using any fertilizer or corrector.
many thanks to everyone for giving help, I really appreciate it a lot!!!
I may add that I see no flowers, some DLs bloomed (not all) and no one is reblooming (except for Stella de Oro), so I don't now if it's normal (we still have very high temps and lot of sun) because they are young (bought bare roots and planted the past spring) or if they are not healthy.

Without doing some more detailed testing you won't really have a full picture but all the trace elements (micronutrients) become less available as the pH gets higher (there's one exception but no need to go there) so lowering the pH should help unless you have an actual deficiency of iron or manganese in the soil. Most commonly it is simply a matter of lowering the pH to make what is already there available.

I don't think the scape turning partly brown is a problem. It is green on the side where the pod is, presumably to maintain the pod. I'm not sure what the problem is with the second picture. The third picture could possibly be nitrogen deficiency or leaf streak, maybe dryness. The fourth looks like some kind of mechanical/pest damage. The fifth is the interveinal chlorosis showing that it is worst on the young leaves and therefore an iron and/or manganese deficiency most likely related to high pH as mentioned. Some daylilies will do this even below pH7. If all yours are doing it then perhaps your pH is higher than that - let us know what the test shows. The flopped over middle leaf in the last picture is something I see here and have never figured out what causes it. It seems to correct itself over time as the leaf matures.
.

I get those flopped over center immature leaves, too. I just assumed it was the heat here in summer.

Sue - I never took any photos of my yellow plant. I tend to sprinkle Milorganite around my beds to keep the rodents at bay. Seems it may have solved the problem. We had rain recently so the Milorganite got soaked in. The plant is now turning green from the base up through the upper sections of the leaves. So it was apparently malnourished. My bad. Odd though that it was the ONLY plant on that side of the raised bed showing Chlorosis. Somehow it didn't get fertilized when all the others did? Geez....

Thanks again a lot!
I will try the test in minutes, if it will work, I' using some stripes of paper made on purpose to check PH (I don't know how do you call these).
It's likely that the problem is ph related. I will let you know.

I checked ph in the garden. it ranges between 5.9 and 6.5.
Really not a scientist test, but I guess it's and idea of the PH. So... how does it sound?

It's lower than I would have expected. It sounds like you used litmus paper? How did you do the test?

I believe the test was not good.
I put some soil in de mineralized water, mixed then checked yes, it's litmus paper.. but then I checked this water only and it's not around 7.
Tap water is 8 and I guess it's right since it's a lot of limescale and limescale comes from calcium (alkaline)
I guess I need a more accurate test!

Edited to add: demineralized water is not neutral, just did a quick research and it's a common mistake. It's a bit acidic, around 5.8 so my test is really not useful.

I think you must have used PH Strips and not litmus paper: You should use distilled water for the test.
http://classroom.synonym.com/d...

Mine are ph strips they were included with a human integrator powder that shoul decrease human body acidity. They are dark yellow. I said yes for litmus strpis because i googled and the picture i saw was similar... Sorry for confusion! As for distilled water it seem it does not have a neutral ph too, at least according to an article i just found. But I'm about to go to a garden center and see if i can find something affordable to test ph. Many thanks for all the help!

I Tend to believe the ph should be above 7. The soil is clay, and these tipes of soil are usually alkaline. So iron is not avalaible for the plants. But... To correct an alkaline soil I read to use some organic fertilizer.. But there are armies of earthworms down there... Is this not enough?

I think the reason for using distilled water is that it gets rid of most chemicals that could distort the readings from the test, and the ph difference in the distilled water itself is not enough to throw the test off enough to make it unreliable. Using your water, there is no way of knowing what other chemicals might be in it, and the ph may be way off the normal scale.

Larry you're right, anyway I will check at the garden center to see if there's something more practical to use.
Distilled water after a short exposition to air becomes acid because of CO2, so in the end I believe there's nothing with neutral ph capable of maintain it when in contact with water or air!

cybersix said:I Tend to believe the ph should be above 7. The soil is clay, and these tipes of soil are usually alkaline. So iron is not avalaible for the plants. But... To correct an alkaline soil I read to use some organic fertilizer.. But there are armies of earthworms down there... Is this not enough?

To correct an alkaline soil you would normally use something like sulfur although there are other chemical alternatives. A fertilizer, organic or otherwise, may help somewhat if it is acidifying but not all are. Nor are composts necessarily going to lower a higher soil pH. Acidic peat moss may help but with a clay soil it will be harder to change the pH than with a sandy soil (this resistance is called the soil's buffering capacity), plus you are having to water with alkaline water. I don't think the earthworms will significantly affect the pH.