We are going thru a dry spell but I have a deep well that I use for flowers and car washing. I spray it on the roots but have to carry it in 5 gallon buckets to some areas

I bought my first bag of alfalfa pellets at a local Rural King. It was $11.99 for a 40 lb bag. Do you ever use a 10-10-10 in the Spring to sidedress your daylilies?

bluegrassmom said:We are going thru a dry spell but I have a deep well that I use for flowers and car washing. I spray it on the roots but have to carry it in 5 gallon buckets to some areas

I bought my first bag of alfalfa pellets at a local Rural King. It was $11.99 for a 40 lb bag. Do you ever use a 10-10-10 in the Spring to sidedress your daylilies?

I'm not sure who you are asking but I will answer what I do.

I try not to use the triple number fertilizers even though I do on occasion; when I wrote the article that was really all I could get at the time locally. I do use that still in the potted plants since there is no nutrients in the freshly mixed pine bark so it will give them an even feeding but since we have been adding fertilizers and all the other stuff to the beds we don't need a triple number fertilizer. I either use 8-8-8 or 10-10-10 in the pots. Here we have plenty of phosphorus in the soil and even in built up beds phosphorus can build up in the soil and if we keep adding it can cause problems.
I actually use a fertilizer specifically for top dressing now that has the lower middle number.

Pat, your water management guy may have said "up to 72%" but there's no way you always lose that much irrigation water to evaporation. There are way too many variables such as temperature, humidity, water pressure, wind and the time of day i.e. sun intensity. At 2 in the afternoon on a 103deg. day in Utah with 9% humidity, you might even lose more than 72%. But a cool early morning in Florida, not even close.

I have converted my entire yard to micro-sprinklers. They keep the sprayed water very low and can be adjusted to water exactly where it's needed and not waste any where you don't. You can set them higher for better coverage if needed, but they are very efficient and also pretty inexpensive to set up. Fun too. Like building a Lego sprinkler system.

What I like best is the flexibility of the system, and so far the 3 houses I've put in micro-systems at, plus the local school garden have all lasted well, in fact at my daughter's house in Salt Lake City the system worked great for 5 years before they moved. (we did have to drain and blow out the lines for winter so they didn't freeze, but you need to do that for most irrigation systems where it freezes)

Here's a picture of the school garden system that the teacher and I installed in one Saturday morning. Two little emitters cover a 4 x 8 raised bed perfectly and the water sprays less than a foot up in the air.

For those of us who live in FL communities, watering twice a week is a way of life. Living in an agricultural area gives you the ability to water every day. I envy you, but with rain, my daylilies get a lot of water and look really ok.

We're expecting rain for the next couple of days, so I put Planttone on 4 of the daylilies I want to remove. If they improve, fine. If they die, I won't use it on other daylilies at this time of the year. Seemed to be a good experiment. We will see what happens!

Thanks for the info, Michelle!

Arlene

Hockeyrabbit said:

I'm also thinking about spreading milorganite in the fall. I live in a zone 5 climate. What are others doing in the fall to prep garden for winter?

I'm also zone 5...

I will continue to fertilize almost up to the first frost. I try to spread alfalfa and Milorganite late in the fall, but if one of those was going to be missed, it would be the Milorganite. I can spread that in the spring with the same effect, but the alfalfa will spend the winter slowly breaking down to provide a nice boost immediately in the spring.

I hand water because I don't have an irrigation system. I do use a fertigater to make my life a little easier. I have been using Miracle Gro (16-8-24) water soluble because that is what is readily available. I think I have found a source for a better product so I may switch to that next year.

Here in Sarasota County, we've been restricted to once a week watering for over 10 years. But they allow us to water every day, if you convert to, or install a micro-sprinkler system. We are also restricted to watering before 8am and after 6pm, so no watering in the heat of the day and winds of the afternoon either.

You might want to check your water company's regulations, Arlene. IF it doesn't rain . . ?

Btw, Michele, the Daniels Professional Plant Food you mentioned in your article has been re-branded as "Nature's Source" for retail sales.

dyzzypyxxy said:

Btw, Michele, the Daniels Professional Plant Food you mentioned in your article has been re-branded as "Nature's Source" for retail sales.

It is also Nature's Source for the professional sales as well, it changed not too long ago.

Nope, 2 times a week before 10 am and after 4 pm. I set the system for the middle of the night. We're on a 9 ft well, but that doesn't have much to do with it. I see neighbors watering during heavy rains. No one says anything. We can hand water at any time, but who can afford that????? I monitor and shut the system off when we have rain. It was turned off for 3 weeks a month ago. That's the responsible thing to do. I don't want the lawn overwatered nor the daylilies.

Plus, if excess water washes away fertilizer.

Thank goodness most folks here in the country don't water lawns, and they look great.

dyzzypyxxy said:.

I have converted my entire yard to micro-sprinklers. They keep the sprayed water very low and can be adjusted to water exactly where it's needed and not waste any where you don't. You can set them higher for better coverage if needed, but they are very efficient and also pretty inexpensive to set up. Fun too. Like building a Lego sprinkler system.

Here's a picture of the school garden system that the teacher and I installed in one Saturday morning. Two little emitters cover a 4 x 8 raised bed perfectly and the water sprays less than a foot up in the air.

Sounds good, and the pictures look great, but what happens when the plants grow taller than the sprinklers, and the foliage begins to block the spray?

dyzzypyxxy said:Here in Sarasota County, we've been restricted to once a week watering for over 10 years. But they allow us to water every day, if you convert to, or install a micro-sprinkler system. We are also restricted to watering before 8am and after 6pm, so no watering in the heat of the day and winds of the afternoon either.

.

There is one great way to get around that. When I lived in Jacksonville, I installed a water to air system. Unlike the normal heat pump which somehow extracts/evaporates heat from the air. A water to air system draws water from a shallow well. My 5 ton system required 9 or 10 gallons of water a minute. I lived on a corner lot, and owned a lot behind my house which extended behind my neighbor's house as well. I had viburnum and other shrubs around the perimeter, and PVC pipe running along under the shrubs. I drilled a hole in the pipe beside every shrub, and every time the a/c cycled in the summer, or the heat came on in the winter the water discharge took care of my shrubs very nicely.

It could also have run sprinklers, had I needed them.


the best part about it: such systems were/are exempt from water restrictions, and much of the water discharge eventually finds its way back into the ground water.

Oh, and in Florida, all ground water is a constant 72 deg. Which is why they're more efficient than air to air systems.

The system I installed in 1980 ran for 19 seasons, until I finally replaced it with a newer one.
That's 19 seasons with zero repairs. We had some trouble with the pump once, but never the system.

I love the concept of the water to air system! Best of all worlds esp. with our 72deg. ground water temp. We have a well, but they had to go down 170ft. to get it into the aquifer.

That's the beauty of the micro system, John. You can move the sprinkler heads just by lifting them up, lowering them down or staking them in another spot. We haven't had a problem with the spray being blocked except by the low greens like lettuce, which we plant along the south edge of the beds anyway. So they always get watered from one side, and the rest of the plants pretty quickly have most of their leaves up above the water spray, a good thing.

For watering daylilies, I'm using half circle sprayers like the one in the right side of the last picture. It has a 12in. stake so it can spray high or low for best coverage. Slanting the stake can make the spray go way up, and I'm using one of those for a few minutes each day to 'mist' my orchids. They are adjustable flow with a little finger valve on the side of each emitter, too, so you can water a pot efficiently on low flow or spray a 10ft. diameter half circle mist on full flow.

I don't have lawn, and I certainly don't water every day unless I'm starting transplants or growing veggies at home. But it's nice to know I am allowed to water any day I think the garden needs it. We often go a couple of months in spring and fall with very little rain and hot weather.

Pat, certainly this summer you've had enough rain for the lawns but we haven't. One weather reporter had numbers for July already - Tampa and counties around there got over 12in. of rain and Sarasota County recorded only 2in. A friend in DeLand, north and east of Orlando has had even more than Tampa got.

chalyse said:Last night I bumped into a helpful FAQ on the American Hemerocallis Society website after searching for info on "daylily summer dormancy." What I was looking for was included in a section on "What diseases affect daylilies?" and just below the nod to summer dormancy there was an entry for rust which mentioned avoiding excessive nitrogen and inadequate potassium nutrition. I don't know what level would be considered "excessive" (??), and I'm sure the nitrogen/alfalfa mentioned here must not even be in the same realm as what is meant, but the juxtaposition caught my eye and may make others wonder, too?

So, now I'm curious about what the possible link might be between rust and high nitrogen or low potassium, because I was also planning to use some nitrogen sources like alfalfa or chicken manure. Having had some fertilizers "burn" plants after use, I try to be careful about possible impacts, and if the "excessive" use of mild fertilizer mixtures can do that to my plants, I wondered if other sources of nitrogen might also?

I suppose it is possible the information has been superseded, since rust is also referred to as a "new" disease, so it may have been written almost 15 years ago. Does anyone know, though, where that association may have come from? Hate to bother @sooby again but hoping she might be able to clarify for us?

The section appears about 3/4 of the way down the page here:
http://www.daylilies.org/AHSfa...

It's not a bother, and in this case I'm certainly the person to "bother" since I'm the one who wrote that part of the AHS FAQ What is "excessive" N is a good question and is something that would probably need to be researched as far as a connection with daylily rust specifically is concerned. (As an aside, I would be cautious with chicken manure because it can be alkaline so you wouldn't want to use it for daylilies if your soil pH is already above, say, 6.5).

Nutrient levels and pH have an affect on plant diseases. The reference to high N and adequate K in regard to rusts comes from Marschner's Mineral Nutrition of Higher Plants, Academic Press. There is a table that shows increased severity of Puccinia rusts with high N, and decreased severity with higher levels of K. In the text it is suggested that there is a difference between obligate parasites (e.g. rust) and facultative parasites (e.g. Fusarium) in this regard.

"As shown in (table) a high nitrogen supply increases the severity of infection by obligate parasites but has the opposite effect on diseases caused by facultative parasites, such as Alternaria and Fusarium, and most bacterial diseases, for example Xanthomonas spp. In contrast to nitrogen, potassium elicits uniform responses: high concentrations increase the resistance of host plants to both obligate and facultative parasites.......".

The chapter goes on to say that stem rust in wheat increases with increasing nitrogen, the most resistant plants being N deficient. As far as K is concerned, the text states that the response to K is usually confined to deficient plants: "that is, potassium-deficient plants are more susceptible than potassium-sufficient plants to parasitic diseases of both groups....." and "Beyond the optimal potassium supply for growth, no further increase in resistance can be achieved by increasing the supply of potassium and its content in plants."

The reference to a "new" disease doesn't mean the FAQ was written 15 years ago (rust only started being noticed around 2000 and it would have been a while after that that I wrote it but I don't remember when for sure). It was meant to convey that the disease hadn't been around in North America long enough for there to be much information on cultivar resistance and susceptibility. That's pretty much still the case.

Regarding fertilizer choices we often talk about specific ratios, such as 3-1-2, or analyses such as 24-8-16 or 20-20-20, but rarely are the amounts applied per unit area mentioned which is also important. For instance you'd need to use a lot less 45-0-0 than 5-1-2, you wouldn't apply them pound for pound (nor compare the costs by the lb of total fertilizer bag weight but by the cost per lb of the nutrient you're going for, such as the cost per lb of N in the bag).

Thanks, Sue, that really helps ground a new understanding for me. Even nicer, it opens up areas that I've had questions about for years now. I'm grateful for the chance to learn and hear more from you ...

I've had some misgivings about manure sources in general (we are just cautious about possible immune system challenges here), and I'm glad I can avoid putting it down if it's not needed. I think it is time for us to get a soil testing kit. In California they do not offer any testing through Extension Services, but I'll check out the professional labs they reference to see if we can afford it, or will just start with the kits or in-ground testers available at big box. Would love the more in-depth professional tests, though, as I hear they can even advise on soil treatments if needed. Any particular test beyond a pH soil-base range and N-P-K nutrients that might be especially insightful for daylily health?

I was excited to find and read more from Marschner's book at Mr. G's open source bookstore, and gladdened to find its contributors were so diverse and internationally representative. One thing noted in the section you cited was a mention that N may be a substrate for Puccinia? In particular, does that mean Puccinia's natural environment is found in N-type materials (manures, high-N plant materials or composts), or that it thrives nutritionally on those materials, or both, or neither? And, what levels of N and K are best to maintain with fertilizers for soil in daylily beds; is there a minimum level of N needed for foliage growth, and a maximum K threshold for disease resistance? I know there are as many recommendations about fertilizer balance and frequency as their are daylily growers, but I'm hoping to learn about levels that may have been tested? Mr. G is not much help there. I did read from the Missouri Botanical Gardens' fact sheet on daylilies that:

"Generally, most beds will produce about 3 to 4 weeks of bloom and then undergo a dormant period during the high heat of summer. This rest period is a time when the bed can be fertilized ... for next year. Apply a low nitrogen source of fertilizer ... 1 pound of ... 4-8-12 per 100 square feet of bed is generally sufficient."

Does that sound like a safe range to start with, even in zones that have daily summer temps at 90-degrees and above? After striking out on finding a simple way to convert from pounds to liquid measures, I'm wondering if there are other advantages (or not) for possibly switching from liquid to dry fertilizer? I think I'm understanding that fertilizer ratios are rate-proportional and that if we talk about, say, a 10-10-10 fertilizer (to keep the math example simple) it could be diluted 1-to-1 parts with water (or spread 1/2 as much) to get 5-5-5 amount, right? And, vice versa, could get 20-20-20 by applying twice as much? But that, for example, there is no easy way to use up 50-10-10 fertilizer by diluting to get the N-ration down and still have much P-K left in the mix. I'll make it simple on myself and look for fertilizers that show square feet as part of the recommended application, if fertilizing is needed.

I hope more daylily research on cultivar resistance and susceptibility gets a boost and is embraced for the benefits it can bring to everyone who cares for them. It does seems like that same research could also lead to better daylily health in other areas, too.

I am sure there is something to the fact that nitrogen may help support rust on daylilies in lab settings. I think there are way too many variables and no precise measures for too much nitrogen for the home gardener to find a direct link to nitrogen and rust on daylilies. Last year I had rust throughout my daylilies, this year I added more nitrogen in the form of Milorganite and so far this season I have not detected any rust on my daylilies (bad year for leaf streak though). No, I don't think the Milorganite prevented the rust this season, I have no idea why the big difference.
I used to read article after article that stated that daylilies did not need high nitrogen amounts, it was often recommended that they not have high nitrogen amounts, now I see more and more people supporting the idea of lots of nitrogen for daylilies. I think over the years daylilies had developed the reputation for being low maintenance, low water andlow fertilizer requirements. Yes, as I found out in my garden, they can do pretty darn good with those low amounts of water and nutrients, but more water and more nutrients can improve their growth, but anything can be overdone. The question is how much does it take to be too much? I think by observing the plants you can tell if you reach that point, but it is hard for most of us to recognize the signs of plant distress and the causes directly related to the problems we see.
Example: Is the yellowing in the leaves caused by natural causes(seasonal changes), too much nitrogen, too little water. pests, etc.? I guess only by gaining more knowledge and experience will we be able to connect cause and symptoms. Right now for me I am pretty much clueless most of the time when I see problems.

Too bad you can't get an Extension service test, Tina. I did notice the Master Gardeners of Orange County (I've no idea if that's anywhere near you) suggest you can drop off a sample and also recommend some home test kits, I expect you've already seen this: http://uccemg.com/Soils-Fertil...

Regarding what to test in addition to pH and NPK, I would include micronutrients, although if you think you have a nutritional problem you might be better getting a leaf analysis which tells you what nutrients are actually being taken up by the plant instead of what is in the soil (and which may not be in an available form). You're not as likely to have micronutrient deficiencies if your pH is around 6.5 or below (although if it too low that's another problem).

For the substrate question, the answer is no (if I'm understanding the question correctly). The natural environment for daylily rust is daylilies (and patrinia). An obligate parasite is one that can only feed and reproduce on living tissue. That's why rust dies out in cold climate winters because there is no living tissue. In cold winter climates in its native areas it can survive as "winter spores" and infect patrinia in the spring and persist that way but there isn't much patrinia in North America, like daylilies it is an Asian native.

Most fungal plant diseases are not obligate parasites, they persist on dead tissue as well (the facultative parasites). The reason given for the differences in nutritional response by Marschner are "based on the nutritional requirements of the two types of parasite. Obligate parasites rely on assimilates supplied by living cells. On the other hand, facultative parasites are semisaprophytes which prefer senescing tissue or which release toxins in order to damage or kill the host plant cells."

You can see how rusts feed from the internal cells from this diagram on my rust info site:
http://web.ncf.ca/ah748/diagra...

Hard to answer the relative amounts of NPK question because very little research has been done with daylily nutrition. I don't think I'd go along with the 4-8-12 during the high heat of summer, though. I don't think I'd go along with that ratio anyway unless it was suggested by a soil test. On occasion people have shared their soil (and leaf) test results with me when they've been having nutritional problems with daylilies and nearly always the NPK levels are high, even very high (the most common problem seems to be interveinal chlorosis, which is generally a pH induced micronutrient deficiency problem). In the absence of a soil test I would go along with the often recommended 3-1-2 ratio and not apply anything during high heat/drought, especially something high in soluble salts.

Yes, half the amount of 20-20-20 would equal 10-10-10 applied dry per square yard or whatever. Dilution with water wouldn't necessarily do the same thing unless you knew exactly how much you were giving per plant/area.

For rust resistance research I don't think it's so much lack of research that's the problem, quite a few studies have been done, but the sheer number of daylily cultivars "out there". There are too many to test and now we have the problem of different "races" of rust so a cultivar's resistance can vary depending which one they encounter.

Seedfork, the nitrogen increasing rust hasn't been tested on daylilies but has been tested on other Puccinia rusts (daylily rust fungus is Puccinia hemerocallidis) in field trials as well as lab tests. If you Google the keywords puccinia nitrogen you'll find some of the studies. But, there are so many other things that can impact rust infection such as cultural practices, temperatures etc., it is bound to vary from year to year in any case.

You'd have to apply quite a bit of Milorganite at 5-2-0 (edited - forgot to include that only 1.5% is water soluble N, the rest slow release) to come into the "excessive" nitrogen category. Quite a few people have mentioned not having rust this year due to the unusually cold winter, I don't know if your garden might have experienced that? Currently it is also too hot in some southern areas for much in the way of rust, or so I've been told.

I mentioned above that little research had been done on daylily nutrition. I thought I would add a couple of studies that come to mind in case it's of interest to anyone. The first one was also written up in the Daylily Journal but going back about ten or twelve years and I'd have to sort through my old Journals to find it - many of you won't have that issue anyway:

http://www.hriresearch.org/doc...

http://horttech.ashspublicatio...

Your link was new to me, Sue, (the site/s for CA Ext. are massive and wide ranging, thanks for finding it!) and though I'm eight hours from the free drop-off in Orange county, I was completely surprised to see their recommendations on highly accurate big-box/online tests in $5-50 range with multiple test areas available. That completely meets our initial goal for soil testing, thank you so much! I wonder how leaf analysis done, or through whom? And, what might be too low of a pH for daylilies?

What an incredible inside view of the rust infection, feeding, and sporing cycle you linked to on your site. Most helpful to both see and read:
"In each entered cell is formed a "haustorium" which is the part of the fungus that absorbs nutrients from the plant. (Some rusts overwinter as mycelium inside areas of the plant which are not killed by freezing, and become active again the following spring). Until the next stage of the infection, little evidence of rust is visible on the outside of the leaf."

Good to know that when it is cooler here I should be okay to apply a 3-1-2 (or proportional-number combo, at adjusted rates), though I will get on it now to do the soil test. I'm less and less anxious to fertilize at all unless I learn that there is actually a deficiency to adjust. I'm reading more reports of people who never fertilize and have daylilies that do great without it, so I know it can be done if all else is well in the garden.

It is encouraging at least that the different strains of rust are now understood to be here, and at some point might be possible to incorporate into resistance and susceptibility studies going forward. Even if it turns out the strains are evolving rather than "different families" that are more stable, I've wondered if it might be helpful to simply test all strains on a cultivar, focusing on much-used hybridizer's cultivars. If the strains have been around possibly since the beginning, it would also help me understand how the many tests from 2001-2007 did not shown more variation, and why people have not reported or photographed blooming cultivars ranked as resistant (50% or less plant areas showing visible spores when infected) that might now be worse off with the new strains (more than 50% area covered, etc.).

I keep thinking that even though there are perhaps 7,000-10,000 currently available cultivars, so many of them come from lines that have a bit of a bottleneck (having pod or seed ancestors that were used to create many of the cultivars in circulation today). I hope the idea of testing cultivars that are or have been very frequently used for hybridization might become more feasible by virtue of their smaller numbers, and then be able to be tested for all the strains that are known.

My concern about high levels of nitrogen, Seed, is that though daylilies grow as well as any other plant given high amounts (I think I've heard "you can't use too much"), I haven't seen large scale commercial gardens use it without also spraying to repress rust at the same time, understandably, so it would be hard to say how it might interact with rust cycles through large-scale observations. Even in small gardens, it seems there are a lot of rust-retarding efforts, from dishwashing liquid (shown to be very effective at keeping rust from showing up externally, though rust may well be in the plant) to more powerful chemical applications. Have you withheld all preventatives from reaching your daylilies, whether through dishwasher liquid sprays or other types of applications? And, has your weather stayed under the 86-to-90-degree range that seems to have been shown to put rust into a kind of "summer dormancy" all its own?

p.s. thanks Sue for the new links to articles - it's great to have further readings to explore!

chalyse,
Below 86-90 degrees for rust dormancy? I thought it was above 92 degrees! Usually by this time of year the temp. is high enough what ever the requirement that I don't have much rust, then it shows up again when the weather starts cooling off. So here the normal pattern should be rust early and late but limited rust during the really hot weather. I think I sprayed some early, but nothing like what I did last year, did the spraying prevent the rust from returning this year, could have, but we did have the very cold winter this past year(for here) and that could also be a reason for no rust.

I notice rust slowing down with temps going close to 90 degrees and up.