I finally took a picture of those non-blooming Day lilies, and what I am realizing is they are only getting a few
hours of morning sun, but I will see how they do next season after they are more established,

Hi Linda,
Interesting subject. I moved from Massachusetts to Maine last July. I was forced to leave many of my daylilies when we sold the house. First I would say that you plant for the following year. As others have said it takes awhile for the plants to to overcome the shock of removal and transplanting. I have found that the larger the fans and root structure the faster and better the recovery will be. A single fan can survive but takes so much longer to develop the needed root base to support blooming.
Planting new daylilies in the spring will insure a good bloom the following year. I along with a lot of other gardeners have got dl on the internet. Find reputable growers that provide good strong scapes and healthy plants.
Flowers and dreams take time to develop.
Chuck

dogwalker said:Hi Linda,
Interesting subject. I moved from Massachusetts to Maine last July. I was forced to leave many of my daylilies when we sold the house. First I would say that you plant for the following year. As others have said it takes awhile for the plants to to overcome the shock of removal and transplanting. I have found that the larger the fans and root structure the faster and better the recovery will be. A single fan can survive but takes so much longer to develop the needed root base to support blooming.
Planting new daylilies in the spring will insure a good bloom the following year. I along with a lot of other gardeners have got dl on the internet. Find reputable growers that provide good strong scapes and healthy plants.
Flowers and dreams take time to develop.
Chuck

Thanks for taking time to reply, thankfully I am a patient person and always take into account that the first season of a planting may not
be a full blooming display, so I will see what happens, and I may even plant more next year in a sunnier area because I have enough room
and will buy from a reputable grower. I never give up! And have always heard Daylilies are easy to grow if you meet their needs.

Patience is truly a virtue! But .... daylilies are undoubtedly one of the most forgiving plants I know. They take all kinds of abuse and then come back to bloom in all their glory! I find very few faults with daylilies. Probably why I adore them so much.

beckygardener said:Patience is truly a virtue! But .... daylilies are undoubtedly one of the most forgiving plants I know. They take all kinds of abuse and then come back to bloom in all their glory! I find very few faults with daylilies. Probably why I adore them so much.

Well, that`s what I hear, hardy, and forever blooming, so LOL, I refuse to fail with this no fail plant! If everyone else can do them
I should be able to as I have planted many a variety of plant for many years and have mostly good luck, UNLESS it is those
pretty big leafed (pardon my spelling) Calendums that like shade and is a annual.

Linda - Just make sure you get dormant (probably hard dormant) daylilies. Evergreens would probably not work in you zone. Winters can be brutal for many cultivars of daylilies. So be sure you check before you get them! I am confident you will have success!

I keep reading more and more that hardiness is not a direct link to dormant or evergreen. There are evergreens that will do well up north, just check with the locals and find out what some of them are. Sure a lot of them would not make it through the first hard winter, but many of them will.
Let me state that is just what I have been reading (I don't live in the north) but check around, the current literature seems to be debunking the dormant-evergreen hardiness connection.
Of course I hear the same about dormants not doing well down south, but I know many that have proven themselves here over the years are actually listed as dormant.
Red Volunteer, which is found in so many gardens in the south as well as the north is a dormant.
Now of course I am not saying the majority of the new southern breed and grown daylilies would be good choices for the north, just don't rule them out before checking with some local growers of the plant.

I tend to have the best luck with dormants or semi dormants. I have given up on anything evergreen tet and 'frilly' looking. The oldies seem to be really tough. Too many expensive pretty little things usually die on me. or they just sit there and never increase.

I've had dormants die here in Florida. By the 3rd year they don't return.

for zone 9, the evergreens would be better for you Becky.

I have to agree with Larry - there is no scientific evidence for a reliable relationship between foliage types and hardiness. I find that most daylilies registered as evergreens are hardy in my conditions. I do not bother to check what the foliage type is when I am considering ordering a daylily and I am in zone 4.

I do find that in my growing conditions it is best to purchase only at least double divisions and to purchase and plant daylilies in the spring or at the latest in early summer.

Hybridizers in the south who breed daylilies in locations with mild winters cannot select for winter hardiness in their gardens. That means whether they introduce dormants, semi-evergreens or evergreens there is no way to determine the hardiness of their plants until after they are grown in cold winter climates. If they choose to introduce only evergreens then some of those evergreens will likely not be hardy in some severe winter locations. The same is true if they introduce only semi-evergreens or dormants. If hybridizers in more northerly locations choose to introduce only dormants then some of their introductions may not grow well in the hotter more southern locations. Hybridizers in northern locations cannot select for daylilies that will grow well in southern-type climates unless their plants are test-grown in those locations.

There will be some daylilies hybridized in the more northern locations that will not do well in more southern locations and vice versa. This will be basically true for daylilies hybridized in any particular location (if they are not test-grown in other locations before selection for introduction) - that is, some of those introductions will not grow well in locations or growing conditions that differ from those of the hybridizer. Put another way, some introductions will only grow well in their hybridizer locations and growing conditions. That could be called genotype x environment interaction.

Yes. I try to stay away from dormant cultivars unless someone tells me a particular cultivar will do ok here.

@beckygardener Could you please name which registered dormants have died out in your garden conditions after three years. Could you also please describe what happens to them. Do they fail to divide? Do they not grow as tall or as large with time (they shrink)? OR ???

Mine were seedlings with dormant parents. Not named and registered daylilies. They are usually the only seedlings I lose. Both parents are dormants. Does that makes sense?

There is another ATP member here who has said that she can't grow dormants in Florida either. She is further north of me. I think all the ones she lost were named and registered plants.

I'm with Maurice, I too don't take any notice of foliage habit when acquiring daylilies, but since I don't buy very new expensive ones I do check if they are hardy for others in a more or less equivalent climate. Back in 1940 A.B. Stout, in his article "Foliage Habits of Daylilies" wrote: "It appears, therefore, that hardiness in the daylilies is not completely correlated with dormancy in growth, nor is tenderness limited to plants with the evergreen habit."

Quoting from the AHS web site FAQ: "The cold-hardiness of daylilies is quite variable. Some are iron-clad hardy. Others are extremely tender. Cold-hardiness is not determined by the foliage habit. Evergreen, dormant, and semi-evergreen can be anything from extremely cold-hardy to extremely tender. To avoid risk of losing a cultivar, choose daylilies which others have already grown successfully in your climate." http://www.daylilies.org/AHSFA...

I just wanted to mention something related to Linda's comment "Well, that`s what I hear, hardy, and forever blooming", which is that, despite their other virtues, daylilies can't be considered as "forever blooming" if that means having flowers on an individual cultivar all through the growing season.

The AHS Popularity Polls can give some idea of what cultivars are liked by others in an area (although bear in mind that regions can have a wide range of hardiness zones) and some people may only vote for the latest and greatest (and expensive!) daylilies - the Pop Poll for Region 1 (inc. Nebraska) is here as a PDF: https://daylilies.site-ym.com/...

Edited to add that previous years' pop poll results would also be useful for someone new to daylilies, but so far I haven't found them on the AHS site, only 2014.

I have found no hard and fast rules on what type does best. I have had dor. that never came back, and evergreen that show up every year. Like wine grapes that can be totally different when planted in close proximity are affected by soil conditions, weather, light, etc. so I have found that the same daylily planted in 3 different areas can also be controlled by little micro - climates in their areas. Although there is an exception to every rule, I have found through experience that I stand a better chance of success when I follow the generally accepted zone guides.
Chuck
Also I keep a journal of the garden. Notations are taken every year so I can see what's planted, how it did last year and is it doing this year. I known this sounds like a lot of work, but has become an invaluable tool and reference.
Just another idea.

Sue or Maurice - Does a hard dormant require a certain amount of cold temps every year to thrive/survive?

Maurice should be able to give you a better answer than me, but as far as I'm aware we don't know what the problem is with some "dormants" that reportedly don't thrive in hot climates. It may have nothing to do with needing cold but actually be heat intolerance. Or a problem with using up stored "food" during respiration during a warmer winter but having no foliage to replace that "food". Come to that, we don't really even know what is a "hard dormant", it's not an official term. Munson, in his book "The Daylily", described a "hard" evergreen as one that was evergreen and hardy, and a "soft" evergreen as one that was evergreen and tender. He switched the use of the terms hard and soft in relation to dormants by saying a "hard" dormant was one that needed a long dormant period and a "soft" dormant was one that only needed a month or less.

Over the years I've brought a number of daylilies indoors for the winter (spring sickness experiments) and it has been very rare for them not to start to grow as soon as they came indoors to the warm, even when brought in during the fall soon after the foliage died back. On that basis the majority do not have a "true" winter dormancy in any case. Any daylily can have dormancy induced by the environment though but the difference is that in a "true" dormancy a plant would require a release mechanism and would not grow immediately on coming indoors unless that release mechanism had been triggered (such as a specific minimum number of hours below a certain temperature). By "true" dormancy I mean what is described scientifically as endodormancy, environmentally induced dormancy would be ecodormancy. I think Maurice has probably explained this elsewhere so I won't elaborate here.

beckygardener said:Sue or Maurice - Does a hard dormant require a certain amount of cold temps every year to thrive/survive?

As far as I know, no one has objectively and scientifically examined that question (published in a scientific journal). One would have to also determine whether any daylily is a "hard" dormant.

Some plant species require a period of cold temperatures to sprout properly in the spring and some may need a period of cold temperatures to flower properly. Daylilies have been examined scientifically for whether they need a period of cold temperatures to flower. The research has never been published. However, the cultivars tested did not need to experience a cold period to flower. The researchers suggested that a cold period would help some cultivars flower better but that seemed a more subjective and less robust conclusion to me.

I have been trying to find cultivars that daylily growers consider hard dormants to test. The test is to allow the cultivar to go winter dormant and then to bring it inside before it experiences significant cold and see if it can break its dormancy and then grow normally. My tests so far have found that daylilies do not seem to need cold to break dormancy or grow apparently normally.

There can be a spurious relationship between foliage types and hardiness. If northern (or cold winter climate) daylily hybridizers produce more dormant registrations then evergreen registrations then they will automatically produce more dormants than evergreens that are hardy. If southern (or mild winter climate) hybridizers produce more evergreen registrations than dormant registrations then they will automatically produce more winter-tender evergreens than dormants. If as well more registrations in total are produced by southern hybridizers then the pattern will be present but effectively spurious.

An extreme simplified numeric example to make the idea obvious: Northern hybridizers produce 100 dormants and 5 evergreen registrations. Southern hybridizers produce 300 evergreen and 5 dormant registrations. Assume all northern-breds are hardy and all southern breds are tender. In the combined population there will be 105 dormants and 305 evergreens; there will be five hardy evergreens and five tender dormants but there will be 100 hardy dormants and 300 tender evergreens. The end result is that it looks as if being evergreen "causes" a daylily to be winter-tender and being dormant "causes" an daylily to be winter-hardy. But the true cause would be that northern-breds can be selected naturally to be hardy while southern-breds cannot.

It is also possible that since a northern-bred cannot be selected to grow well in extreme high temperatures, that northern-bred dormants do not grow well in southern summer conditions and die out over time. If northern-breds tend to be dormants then dormants may grow more poorly in high summer temperatures.