The winter storm NEMO dumped a good 2+ feet in our locality last weekend....
I was marooned in a hotel room closer to work...  Boy did I miss being home.
By the time I could get out...I was eager to see what had happened at the farm.
This is the sight that greeted me.

My husband had been busy plowing. I wondered if I would ever see my lovely daylilies again :) The wind had been fierce and had blown the snow in great drifts.  One part of my garden cleared faster than the others...and I could again see bare ground by mid-week. Some daylilies  still had partial green leaves at their bases. I am thinking that these must be the evergreens and semi-evergreens.  More snow flurries have come and gone...and now we have another winter storm that is primarily bringing us howling winds. Any snow that fell is swirling into small "snow devils".

Last night I concentrated on the growing seedlings. Many are 6 plus weeks old now and got their first hair cuts and mild fertilizers.  I cut back top growth to about 6 inches. This forces the roots to gain attention from the growing seedling as opposed to growing excessive top foliage.  Many hybridizers are divided on this subject..but it definitely makes these kiddos easier to manage. I have lost seedlings by foliage getting caught and seedlings getting uprooted in the moving of trays..  Each one is precious... so I try to avoid that :) The robust root systems when I remove them for planting... encourages me to continue this practice.

Here are some of the kids today......  Notice how wonderful and large the seedlings are on the left. They are from a friend Dan, who shared seeds with me. They are growing gangbusters!   Sharing seeds is so much fun and really educational... as we each have our different spin on what is beautiful in a daylily and it is good to keep an open mind when hybridizing.
 

In closing, stay warm.....and think SPRING...it is definitely on it's way....   Then the outdoor fun will begin!
Claudia

Four days ago, I woke up to this wintery scene. These are always welcome here, up north, as the snow is the perfect insulator for the daylilies. It maintains them at a nice 29 degrees and helps prevent frequent heaving of the plants due to thawing. 

Luckily we do not see as much of this freeze thaw cycle in Zone 5b. Further south, I hear more hybridizers moaning :)  But my joy over a nice 6-8 inch snow cover was short lived.    

Two days later temperatures bounded up to 50 degrees with 2 inches of warm rain overnight... and this is what we see now.

Voila... the grass is even still green... :)  I let my daylilies to go to sleep " Au Natural" in the fall.  

After bad experiences cutting green scapes I decided to let mother nature " do her thing".  There are pros and cons about garden tidying up .. but somehow I simply cannot fault mother nature.  The foliage stays on as long as it survives...and then settles down to mulch the crowns.  We mulch all first year plantings and seedlings with a high quality, fine fir bark mulch to protect the crowns.  Once they get through heir first winter, they are on their own.

Since I experiment a lot with southern cultivars.... I am taking a risk that I hope will help others make decisions about what they would like to try for themselves. I am finding a  huge degree of adaptabilty in the daylily.  Dormants, semi-evergreens and evergreens all live here.  The risks I have taken have netted me some stunning seedlings.

I hope to share stories of successes ( as well as failures) with you in my blogs.

Again I invite any questions ...

Spring...... is on it's way!!
Claudia