We started with just a few daylilies this past April. We bought several more and also were given some. Our flower bed looked beautiful. However, we have a question and hope someone can help us. We went on vacation for 10 days and when we came back, there were tall weeds all around the lilies we got from friends. The closer we looked, the weeds actually look exactly like the clump of daylilies that had already bloomed. Our question is, do new sprouts grow that fast? Do that many sprouts shoot up in such a short period of time. If these are daylily sprouts, we want to keep them and let them really be full this coming spring, but if it is a weed, we want to get rid of it as soon as possible. Any ideas?

There are several weeds that do look just like daylilies. Would you happen to have a picture to post??

Yes photos would help.
We have nutgrass/nutsedge and another one (don't know the name) that look like daylily fans coming up.
Nutgrass is a real problem because it's hard to get rid of. If you don't get the nut that the root grows from it will come right back.

The kind folks here helped me with that last year after I posted a photo. I just thought it was an amazing seedling. Luckily I pulled it right away, and haven't had a problem since. But a photo would help the good folks here. ~Jan

Jan, I remember your "amazing seedling" last year! Too bad when it turned out to be not-so-amazing! It sure had me fooled!

On the other site, there is someone right now who thinks their daylily turned into 'something else' and it now nutsedge.

I had some quack grass turn up in my seedling pots and I used reputable potting soil.

I have a whole clump of thin foliage coming up at the edge of a DL. I will have to dig it up to make sure, but it looks like it might be a DL pod that seeded itself abundantly. I'm curious...It looks identical to the foliage of the DL it is growing out of.

Mine look just like a daylily, but it was growing so fast. Turned out it wasn't.~Jan

If you carefully dig it up you can check the roots, they look nothing like a daylily. Nutsedge has a tiny tubor like Tink said that you must remove or it will grow back. If it really looks like a daylily then you could replant it in a pot to keep an eye on it.

Picture below from here:http://sadlerhoa.wordpress.com/2012/06/29/your-lawn-will-survive/

I have bunches of little sprouts that look like small daylily fans. I didn't have them until I started using Milorganite. Don't know if the Milorganite has anything to do with it or not but that's been my theory for the last couple of years. They are very easy to pull out of the dirt and I love Milorganite so I guess I'll just keep pulling the weeds. Wish all my weeds were so easy to pull up.

DD

I had the same thing happen to me last year. It was on one of my best seedlings and I was tickled to death to have that many babies coming up. Weeeeeellllllll you know the rest of the story. It started growing a little branch off to the side of the blade of the daylily fan and I quickly dug the whole big clump up and was told it was nutsedge and that it was. Burst my bubble, it did. Mine was in a pot, so I quickly dispatched that clump of weed to the garbage bag. Darn stuff, sure can fool you into thinking you've hit the jackpot for seedlings.

I had a similar experience with a new DL from Olallie. It was so weird coming up, lots of little buds at the top of the "scape"... well, to cut to the chase, that daylily came with 2 other plants that must have been growing with it. But they are both nice, so I will just consider them a bonus that came with Black Pearl! Balloon Flower and Tradescantia, both a lovely blue.

Well I had a piece of asparagus come with one of my daylilies. Imagine my surprise when I see asparagas growing along side my daylily.

Here are the pictures we took of the two different looking bulbs and the sprouts. Hope someone can help us with determining if this is nutsedge or actual daylily sprouts......THANKS!

I am not an expert but that does not look like nutsedge to me. It almost looks like ditch lilies.

We honestly can't really tell from just looking what is daylily that bloomed last year and these that came up over a month ago. THey look so similar and are everywhere. We realy appreciate you responding and hope that we don't have a big issue that we are about to have to deal with. It will be a lot of fun digging all this up.

On another note, we tried to hybridize 2 different daylilies this year. We got the seed pod and let them turn brown and have seeds in the fridge waiting till September. We are really hoping that these will come up and grow as big as these are. Our oldest son and his wife have had 2 children that had complications and passed away at birth. So we are going to name one plant after Kenzie and the other after Preston. I believe our son and his wife are excited as we are about the flowers that could bloom. We hope that the blooms come out as beautiful as the babies when they were born. We read that we needed to wait until September before planting. Is that a true statement? We hope that we can get them sprouted so that they will grow up and hopefully bloom in the spring. Do we have our hopes up to high?

Thanks again for everyones help and advice.

To me, in the first picture anyway, it looks like it could possibly be crab grass. That bottom root, which looks sort of jointed, looks exactly like what I have coming up in my front beds, away from my daylilies. I was told it was crab grass, but I'm really not sure what kind of grass it is.

What zone are you in? The warmer it is there, the better chance you'll have of getting a bloom the first year. Where I'm at, it's taken 2 years for my first 5 or 6 to bloom, and it's going to be at least another year for the rest of them. I grew about 100 seedlings, so I'm hoping that next year will be great! And no, you don't have to wait until September to plant the seeds. You just need to chill them for a certain amount of time. BUT, I'm honestly not sure about this, and hopefully someone else will chime in. If it's an evergreen, you may not need to chill the seeds for as long, or at all? I've got almost all dormants, and chilled my seeds for only 3 weeks, and had almost 100% germination.

I also want to say how sorry I am for your terrible loss, and this is a lovely way of honoring the babies.