Hi everyone! I'm a rank amateur with a quite large, entirely blank garden. I have so many questions. Here are a few...

- Regardless of whether a site sends me two or three fans, I'm putting 'em all in the same hole, right? So if I want, say, a trio of a given variety, I'm ordering three?

- Planting in fall (near Boston, zone 6b) is a good idea, right?

- Bonus variety recs: My ideal day lily is short (18-22"), orange, tet, re- or long-blooming, dormant, and tough (remember, I have no idea what I'm doing). And available online. I'm a little overwhelmed by variety, so I would love some guidance.

I've spent like an hour browsing this particular forum and y'all are amazing - thank you for this wonderful resource!

Alex. Daylilies increase so each fan can get its own hole to cover more area. If you plant them together you'll get a large clump sooner but you will need to divide it sooner as it crowds itself.

I can't suggest a particular variety as your climate is much different than mine.

AlexInBoston said:

- Regardless of whether a site sends me two or three fans, I'm putting 'em all in the same hole, right? So if I want, say, a trio of a given variety, I'm ordering three?

- Planting in fall (near Boston, zone 6b) is a good idea, right?

- Bonus variety recs: My ideal day lily is short (18-22"), orange, tet, re- or long-blooming, dormant, and tough (remember, I have no idea what I'm doing). And available online. I'm a little overwhelmed by variety, so I would love some guidance.

Welcome!

In your zone, planting in Fall, you'll have a better chance of overwintering if you plant all of your fans together. If you receive multiple fans or a clump, yes, plant them in the same hole. You can divide them and plant them as single fans in the spring, if you'd like.

If you haven't already found the Daylily Database, you should try it. You can input your own search parameters with your preferences:

http://daylilydatabase.org/sea...

Welcome to our addiction!

Alex
Are you looking for the color "orange" exclusively ? Only short ones ? Are these for the border ?

Alex
A lot of the sellers send a double fan of a cultivar. I try to stay away from those that send single fans as they take longer to establish in my garden and the doubles just seem to do better for me. Just make note that "DF" indicates double fan or "SF" for a single fan. I've been surprised a few times thinking I would receive a double only to receive a single fan.

I'm relatively new to growing daylilies also, but I thought I'd share two oranges that I really like in my zone 5a garden. The first is Mauna Loa. It is a very striking bright orange, and fits all your criteria except it doesn't rebloom. It's an older variety, so it should be easy to find and inexpensive.



The second is Redneck Riviera. It was my favorite plant in my garden this year because I'd had it less than a year and it still had so many blooms. It is a bit taller than you are looking for though.

Fall is okay keeping in mind that earlier is better. But I'd recommend Spring as it gives the plants way more time to settle in and as a bonus you may actually see blooms the same year. This can be helpful because sometimes you can receive the wrong daylily even from well respected vendors when you order online. If you are very particular about color and height you'd probably want to know sooner rather than later if you got an odd tall purple variety with all the short oranges you ordered.

Pat236 said: Alex
A lot of the sellers send a double fan of a cultivar. I try to stay away from those that send single fans as they take longer to establish in my garden and the doubles just seem to do better for me. Just make note that "DF" indicates double fan or "SF" for a single fan. I've been surprised a few times thinking I would receive a double only to receive a single fan.

There are a lot of sellers on the Lily Auction that sell "single fans" but actually ship DOUBLE or more. I've been surprised as how rarely I actually get a single fan.

You usually order a specific daylily. The vendor will select the number of fans.

I've ordered from Oakes. They send a minimum of three fans. Park Lane says at least two. But I have received single fans, too, from a vendor who will not be named here. So read the fine print before ordering.

I have split bunches up and it takes longer to fill in spaces. But if it 's not cost effective to order a bunch of different lilies, that may be the best way to go.

The Oakes website allows you to search their offering by color, height, foliage and other criteria. But their prices are not always the best.

I'd second the Mauna Loa recommendation. It's a very pretty flower. I do like orange.....but somehow I've wound up with several pinks.

I have often wondered why on earth vendors(who ship double fans) advertise single fans, it seems there is a general daylily enthusiast rule that daylilies are a social plant(they like company when planted). I don't know if that is an actual thing or not, but I automatically shy away from single fans. It might just be a mental thing, but it seems a single fan just sits there waiting for company before it grows. Any science to that?

Seedfork said:I have often wondered why on earth vendors(who ship double fans) advertise single fans, it seems there is a general daylily enthusiast rule that daylilies are a social plant(they like company when planted).

I think some sellers line out single fans, and any new fans that develop get shipped along with the single. If it doesn't multiply, the seller still has the option of shipping it, since it was stated to be a single.

Then again, I bought a single fan of Majestic Prime on the Lily Auction, and the seller send me two double fans. So, I don't know.

Hazelcrestmikeb said: Alex
Are you looking for the color "orange" exclusively ? Only short ones ? Are these for the border ?

I want a dark one, too - same general guidelines but something deeeeeeep. Happy to take recs on that too. They're for the border of a hill. I have this complicated terraced hill, a complete blank slate, and I want day lilies at the fringe of it - where the flat top part starts to slope down.

I originally thought I had a 12' strip for daylilies, but this past weekend I had a serious and honest talk with myself and admitted that half of it isn't sunny enough. Now, with about 6' to work with, it looks like two varieties is my max. Would y'all agree? And I'm trying to shuffle things around in my head and come up with more space for them - I really wanted kindof a ton of daylilies.

mystlw said:
If you haven't already found the Daylily Database, you should try it. You can input your own search parameters with your preferences...

Welcome to our addiction!

Thank you! You're all very nice. I found the Daylily DB overwhelming, honestly - too many results without enough context for me. I think it might be a good resource for experts, but for a novice I felt like I needed more human guidance. You're my Daylily DB now, Myst.

[quote="bxncbx"]Fall is okay keepi

ng in mind that earlier is better. But I'd recommend Spring as it gives the plants way more time to settle in and as a bonus you may actually see blooms the same year. This can be helpful because sometimes you can receive the wrong daylily even from well respected vendors[/quote]

Good point about wrong varieties. But re. blooms, either way - right about now, or in next spring - I'm hoping for blooms next summer, right? I figured getting them in the ground now would increase my chances to see flowers next summer.

And thank you for the Mauna Loa rec! That's very pretty.

Our dining room has orange accents, so I've been commanded by my (extremely supportive) wife to try to have orange flowers for cutting.

AlexInBoston said:
Good point about wrong varieties. But re. blooms, either way - right about now, or in next spring - I'm hoping for blooms next summer, right? I figured getting them in the ground now would increase my chances to see flowers next summer.

I have found good, healthy plants planted in the spring will usually bloom that year. But ones planted the fall last year produced more scapes and flowers.

If you can get them in the ground early enough to get roots growing, mulch well, I expect you will have more flowers than if you wait to plant in the spring. But a really cold, early winter might wipe them out.

But I have little experience with growing in your climate.

Just FYI, daylilies do not make the best cutting flowers as the flowers only last one day. You could cut the entire scape off and bring it inside to bloom but I'm thinking that isn't exactly what your wife had in mind.

Yes, you might get more flowers from plants received in the Fall but if you have weather like NYC does then you may not get any flowers next year. We've had two very mild winters which isn't normal. If we have our typical up and down temperature rollercoaster in the Spring on top of a very cold winter with little snow cover then the plants may be so stressed that they either die or just hang on but don't have enough energy to bloom.

I can recommend buying from North Country Daylilies. I bought several cultivars from them and planted them in the Spring. I think they all bloomed that year (except maybe for one). They sent lots of fans (instant clumps) and they settled in great! I should mention though that I bought late bloomers to extend my season. If you want a lot of early bloomers then getting them in the Fall is the only way to go if you want a chance of seeing them bloom next year.

As for space, I have a tiny, postage stamp yard and have over 100 daylilies plus a veggie garden, iris, peonies, an apple tree, roses, etc. Most of my daylilies don't multiply very quickly because I don't baby them. Which means I plant the cultivars about 6" apart. And most of my daylilies get primarily morning sun and some are in quite a bit of shade and still bloom well. But those are older diploids that are plain looking (Annie Welch, Double Gardenia, Becky Lynn). Not sure how well the newer tets would do in the same conditions.

bxncbx, Boston winters are noticeably worse than NYC winters - I say this as someone who moved here from Brooklyn last year. Where are you, the Bronx? I miss NYC! But not my old postage-stamp yard, I must say.

The local garden group here is saying fall is fine for planting, though, so I'm going to go for it and mulch 'em. (Thanks, FlowersGalore!)

Oh - and I actually was kinda thinking about cutting the whole scape off. We try to go tall in that room anyway. It's fine, right? Won't have any effect on future blooms? In previous experiments, it's seemed like if I get one with three or four buds on it, they'll just go right ahead and bloom one after another. The blooms seem to get increasingly enervated as they go, though.

Alex
I am a zone 6 garden. I plant in the fall and the spring, for fall stick with growers close to your zone and get them in by mid Sept. Some of my new arrivals didn't bloom this year, especially the ones I got from southern growers (many of theirs had already bloomed before I ever got them this spring) but I also didn't get bloom from a few northern growers also. I usually plant whatever I get from the grower in one hole. I did get six fans of Gladys Biestek in the fall and did 2 plantings, by early summer I had moved the one with the other just because I needed the room for spring arrivals They both bloomed. I would advise keeping what you get together, even if the one fan does bloom having one scape come up will not make a dramatic statement and you might get discouraged, it will take years unless you get a good grower that makes a lot of fans quickly. Like Larry said they seem to not grow as well if just a single fan is planted. I would say most of mine that are newer make 1-5 new fans a season and more 2's than 5's. Plant about 18" to 24" apart you can do 12" but might need to divide sooner if they crowd each other in future years. Don't have any short orange DL so can't recommend any but being on here you will find many enablers (oops) I mean helpers of your quest. Just thought I do have a couple short orange
Would love to see pictures of your terraced garden when you are done.
Orange Fizz a double


Spacecoast Extreme Fashion more yellowy orange

Man, I wish I'd heard that excellent advice about sticking close to my zone before I ordered a bunch of stuff from Oakes in Tennessee. Whoops. Well, I will mulch around them.

Someone advised (or at least casually implied, or at least I interpreted it that way) that instead of choosing two varieties and massing them, I should order one each of whatever caught my eye, and that sounded like way more fun to me so I ended up ordering: 2 Purple do Oro; 1 each of Planet Max, Plum Perfect, Lord Jeff, Carefree Peach, Earlybird Cardinal, Simple Melody.

But as a foundation, I'll have three Earlybird Oriole.