Once the blooming season is over, daylilies are not a pretty sight in the garden. lilies (daylily) have worked hard all summer for our gardens, delivering beautiful flower arrangements day after day. But with the arrival of autumn, when the temperatures begin to drop, the foliage of the lilies is not a pretty sight. The leaves turn yellow, then brown and patchy.
Here are some things you can do to overwinter your daylilies without too much trouble.
1. Remove plant debris from the base of the plant.
Throughout the growing season, I use fallen leaves as a kind of ad hoc mulch, so I’m not a fan of deep cleaning when it comes to cleaning up for the winter. However, I make sure to always dispose of organic waste that has been affected by pests and disease. This is very important in the fall, as increased humidity and decreased sunlight is the perfect storm for fungi to wait.
The foliage of a day lily does not retain its shape over winter. It becomes brown and smooth. The first is yellow and brown foliage showing signs of mold, black spot, the dreaded daylily rust (caused by Daylily Puccinia fungi) or any other fungal infection.
Dispose of these plant materials with your household trash, not your compost bin (unless you contract your yard waste to a municipal hot compost facility).
2. Cover your daylilies in the fall.
Once you remove the plant debris, you will be left with bare soil. Aesthetically, a bare floor can look nice. But from an ecological point of view, it’s the last thing you need in your garden, even in winter. This is where padding comes in.
We often think of mulching as a springtime activity meant to retain moisture in the soil, keep the soil cool, and prevent weeds from overtaking the daylilies as they mature into the season. But winter mulch is just as beneficial because it keeps the temperature around the root structure constant.
Properly covering daylilies is just as important for protection in winter as it is in summer.You should apply a thicker layer of mulch if you just planted young daylilies this year. Once the plants are established (meaning they have survived at least one winter), you can mulch regularly.
The key to a good winter mulch is lightness and lightness. You don’t want the mulch to form an impermeable mass that presses down on the root structure. You can mulch with straw, wood chips, shredded leaves, and even dry grass clippings.
As an optional step before mulching, you can add fresh compost to the base of the plant.
3. Prune your daylilies (optional)
Of course, cutting dead foliage is not optional. You must do this to pave the way for new growth. But pruning time is. Some gardeners prefer to leave the foliage until spring and then prune it, while others think daylilies are best pruned in the fall.
Should I prune my daylilies in the fall?
Several factors can influence this choice. If your winters are cold and prone to severe frosts, your daylilies won’t fare as well.
Once the first hard frost hits, most daylily varieties turn brown and mushy. This leads to leaves that do not provide good root ball protection during the winter months. And that’s the main reason daylilies have risen to number one on this list of plants that need a good fall pruning.
Let the lily foliage die back on its own, and after the first frost, cut back 4 to 6 inches (10 to 15 cm) above the crown. If you don’t like sticky foliage, you can prune the daylilies a few days before the first frosts.
Even evergreen lilies will benefit from a pruning session. However, there are new daylily cultivars that are considered evergreen, with ‘Prince of Venice’ and ‘Starburst Red’ being two popular choices. Although its flowering period is still in the hottest months of late spring and summer, its foliage remains green all year round. If you garden such a cultivar, you can leave the foliage all winter, especially if you are in an area with mild winters. But even these evergreens look a bit wrinkled in the spring, so you’ll have to clean them up.
The bottom line is that all dead leaves should be removed by the time growth resumes in the spring, so if you have an early grower, it’s best to do this job in the fall.
4. Divide your daylilies when they are over three years old.
If you have chosen to prune your daylilies in the fall, you may have noticed one thing: once the leaves have been pruned, you can finally assess the size of the root ball. You may even find out of control shoots messing up your landscaping plans.
Again, it’s up to you what you do with it. You can let them grow into a new group of daylilies. Or you can remove the suckers and then repot them or give them away.
However, if your daylilies are showing signs of aging, such as a decline in bloom quality and duration, now is a great time to divide them. Like lilies, the daylily doesn’t fare as well when crowded, as its sticky root ball has a hard time absorbing nutrients.
Daylilies ‘Autumn Minaret’Daylilies take two to three years to reach their full flowering potential, so if your plants are still in that time frame, you don’t need to divide them just yet. But once you hit the three-year mark, watch for signs that your daylilies need a lift.
As with pruning, some gardeners prefer to leave the apartment to make their spring to-do list. But here are a few reasons why I think it makes more sense to divide daylilies in the fall.
- Ideally, division is done after growth is complete for the season. If you divide in the spring, you risk splitting clumps that are just beginning to emerge, slowing or stunting the growth of the daylilies.
- Small divisions take longer to become small groups. Therefore, the spring division can lead to poor flowering during this first summer.
- A mild fall with abundant rains creates ideal soil conditions for the establishment of the new divisions.
How to divide daylilies?
It depends on your goals. If you’re just looking for a cone, you can easily split them by gently digging around the roots to expose them. Then use your shovel to cut the root ball in half, lift one half and move it. Add fresh compost to fill the hole that was left.
You can dig up the entire root ball for a more even distribution.If you want to create a daylily border or fill a garden bed, you need to be a little more calculated. In this case, dig up the whole clump with a shovel. Lift the clump from the ground, loosen the soil and shake it up enough to allow the root structure to maneuver.
Then carefully separate the fans with sharp pruners. It is ideal to keep fan plants in groups of at least three, as the size of the new division often determines how quickly it recovers and begins to produce flowers again.
Daylilies can be perfectly divided into separate fans. If your goal is to fill a larger area, you can treat each individual fan as a new league. Keep in mind, though, that these take longer to mature and regrow into a strong clump of roots, so you’re unlikely to see any flowers that first summer.
Once you have made the division, replant as soon as possible. Be sure to transplant new plants to the same depth as before, ideally with the crown a few inches below the soil line.
The tuberous rhizomes of daylilies will recover faster if you divide them in the fall. Finish the daylily section by covering the new plants with fresh compost and watering and mulching them thoroughly.
Preparing your daylilies for winter only takes an hour or two, but you’ll be rewarded with beautiful, strong blooms in the summer.