I may be mistaken
but I think I noticed during replantings this fall that many of my largest, most vigorous DL fans seemed to have had their crowns at nearly two inches below the soil line, while smaller and more fragile fan crowns were at the standard "no less than one inch" under the ground. This held true for both garden and pots, north-and-south grown varieties, dormants and evergreens, and full-sun versus deep-shade gardens. The only constant I can put my thumb on was that the heat held steady around 100 degrees for about 2.5 months (July through mid-September) when nearly all of them stopped blooming or growing and showed some signs of stress (not real dormancy, but a kind of limbo land).
Is it possible that 1) fans will adjust themselves to the crown-depth they like most and we should not work to raise them back up, or 2) that I could have mistakenly planted some deeper and they did well because their crowns or roots needed more buffer from the heat or access to cooler, wetter soil below, and I should re-plant them at a similarly deeper level this time, or 3) that their vigor was not likely related to having their crowns deeper (temporary boost burrowing down for moisture at the expense of long-term health?) and that I should re-plant at 1-inch again to avoid distressing them over the winter?
Related to that is my question about planting with "moats" around the fan or clump. I normally make a 2-inch high moat out of packed dirt around newly or re-planted daylilies so that waterings will be most effective early on. But, soon enough, that moat melts down around the fan and, in effect, puts the crown at a little deeper level under the soil line. Do people in warm climates generally find it better to scoop out around the fan again, or lift up and re-set the fan's crown higher, or just leave it as is?
