Big Colorful Blooms and Favorite Perennial for Easy Summer Gardening

Happy Monday!

 I’m sharing a garden update and blooms around The Potting Shed,

with my favorite perennial for easy summer gardening . . .

no green thumb required!

Summer officially arrives this Thursday, but we’ve had weeks

of summer temperatures here in North Carolina and are in the 90s this week.

Warning: Photo heavy post ahead, so grab a drink and get comfy.

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June is peak bloom season for daylilies in our zone 8a garden!

If you’re looking for a perennial that’s low-maintenance,

blooms repeatedly for years with little attention,

tolerates the heat and a wide variety of soil conditions,

look no further than the daylily!

You can’t beat daylilies for easy summer gardening, thanks to their reliability,

hardiness and big, colorful blooms in the garden!

Most daylilies will thrive in hardiness zones 4 – 9.

If you don’t know your USDA zone, you can look it up by zipcode, HERE.

When most people think of daylilies, they think of ‘Stella De Oro,’

the most widely grown daylily variety, but there are nearly 90,000 daylily cultivars

registered with the American Daylily Society!

Originally, daylily colors were limited to yellow, orange, and rusty-red.

Hybridizers have made great improvements in daylilies over the years and today

they’re available in colors ranging from near-whites, pastels, pinks, vivid reds,

deep crimson to purple, blue, and blends with multi-colored patterns.

Daylilies bloom repeatedly for years with minimal attention, tolerate a wide variety of soil conditions

and stand up to the summer heat, humidity and are even drought-tolerant!

The daylily’s botanical name, Hemerocallis, means “beauty for a day”

as each bloom remains open for a single day.

Depending on the variety,

the bloom season for daylililes can last 30 to 40 days or sometimes longer!

Blooming starts in late spring and can continue into early fall.

Flowers appear on stalks called ‘scapes’, with multiple flowers

blooming on a single scape. Each daylily plant has numerous scapes and

can produce hundreds of flowers in a season.

Although daylilies are drought tolerant, consistent moisture and watering

will ensure that you get maximum blooms!

For maximum colorful blooms in your garden, make sure they get a couple of inches of water

a week, whether it’s from rain or the hose.

Daylilies aren’t super fussy about fertilizer.

Give them a top dressing of compost and layer of mulch in the spring,

or a dose a low nitrogen fertilizer, such as Milorganite.

To keep the plants looking their best,

snap off the spent flowers, taking care not to break off nearby buds.

Deadheading spent blooms not only tidies the plants, but also prevents

unnecessary seed development which diminishes the following year’s flower production.

My hubby helps me with deadheading in the morning.

It’s very therapeutic to snap off those spent blooms while listening to the

birds chirping and bees buzzing around the garden!

When the daylilies have finished blooming, you’ll have scapes remaining in the foliage.

To keep your daylily beds tidy, you can cut back the spent scapes.

They’ll begin to die back, changing from green to brown, drying out.

I usually wait a week or so and the 90 degree temps will dry the scapes out enough

that they’ll pull lose easily from the foliage,

making it an easier chore than bending over to cut them.

For best results, plant daylilies where they’ll get six hours or more of direct sunlight each day.

Daylilies will grow in partial shade, but produce fewer flowers.

Daylilies are easy to transplant, quick to multiply and relatively free from pests.

They can be enjoyed as a pop of color in a garden bed among other perennials

or massed together and planted in drifts.

In hot climates, dark-colored varieties of daylilies will benefit from some

afternoon shade, to help them retain their flower color.

Daylilies will grow for many years with little attention,

but will produce more flowers if they are divided about every 5 years.

Divide daylilies after the plants have finished blooming in late summer or early fall.

To divide, dig up the entire plant and cut or pull the clump apart.

You can keep the divisions larger or you can divide the plant into individual fans.

🌸 Divide daylilies after the plants have finished blooming in late summer or early fall. Dig them up and shake the dirt off the roots or use a hose to help remove the dirt so you can see how to separate the roots.

🌸 Divide the roots into clumps or individual fans. To create clumps, you can flip the root ball over and use a spade to break it into 6 – 8 inch pieces. To create fans, you can use your hands to gently separate the leaf fans. Each clump or fan should have at least three stems and a healthy amount of roots. Replant new divisions right away so roots don’t dry out.

🌸 Before replanting, trim the foliage back to a height of about 6 inches. When planting clumps or individual fans, your planting spots should not be any closer together than 12″, as they need room to multiply and expand. Plant one clump or two plants per hole. The closer together the planting spots are, the quicker you will have a full appearance.

🌸 It normally takes a couple years for the planting spots to fill in and multiply into a nice clump. This also depends on the cultivar as some multiply into clumps much faster than others. When digging your planting hole, make it slightly wider than the root base and deep enough to cover with soil an inch above the white area just above the roots called the crown.

🌸 After planting, cover with 1 to 2 inches of mulch to hold in moisture. For the first couple of weeks after planting, water your daylilies every two to three days. Then water thoroughly once a week until they are well established, about six to eight weeks following planting. Once established, daylilies are drought tolerant. Even so, frequent watering will result in more abundant and beautiful blooms.

When dividing and transplanting, I usually plant two fans together for a

healthy start in a new area in the garden.

The more fans, the more likely a clump will bloom in the same season.

Replant new divisions right away so roots don’t dry out.

The fans can then be planted close together to fill in areas of your garden.

Before replanting, trim the foliage back to a height of about 6 inches

and cover with 1 to 2 inches of mulch to hold in moisture.

My favorite online source for daylilies is Smokey’s Gardens,

one of the top daylily cultivators in the United States,

with over three thousand varieties of daylilies and over five million plants!

(no affliation, just a source I’m happy with and have ordered from for several years 🌸)

Daylilies also attract pollinators, including butterflies, bees

and even hummingbirds.

In addition to daylilies, Endless Summer Hydrangeas are blooming!

If you’re not familiar with Endless Summer Hydrangeas,

they’re are a re-blooming bigleaf variety of hydrangea.

Early season flowers are produced from buds on old wood from the previous year,

with the new season’s growth pushing blooms later in the summer.

I highly recommend planting an Endless Summer Hydrangea if you have room in your landscape.

They mature to 3 – 5 feet in height and width and are hardy in USDA zones 4 – 9.

Hydrangeas need sun to bloom, but prefer morning sun with afternoon shade

especially in the hot and humid South. . .just like me. ;)

Endless Summer Hydrangeas can be blue or pink depending on your soil’s pH level,

turning blue in acidic soil and pink in alkaline soil.

When fertilizing Endless Summer Hydrangeas, give your reblooming hydrangeas the fuel they need

with a slow-release granular fertilizer labeled ‘bloom boost,’

and higher level of phosphorus, the nutrient that promotes flower formation,

like Schultz Bloom Plus Slow-Release Plant Food (12-24-12).

(Phosphorus is the middle number in the N-P-K nutrient label.) 

Fertilize your hydrangeas when you see green foliage begin to emerge from the bases of the stems

in the spring, and again after the first set of blooms fade.

To make way for the new flowers, snip off the faded blooms,

pruning away each flower head down to the first set of leaves.

You can amend your soil to become more acidic by adding composted oak leaves,

pine needles and coffee grounds.

For quicker results, use a soil acidifier product,

following the directions on the package to produce blue flowers.

Garden lime will increase soil alkalinity and keep hydrangeas pink in color.

We have a couple of BloomStruck Hydrangeas planted by The Potting Shed.

BloomStruck has red-purple stems and is a newer addition to the

Endless Summer collection of reblooming hydrangeas.

Bees have been busy buzzing in the garden. . .

They’re especially attacted to the the pinkish-purple colored flowers

on the silvery spikes of Lamb’s Ear.

June 17th – 23rd is designated as Pollinator Week, designed to raise awareness for pollinators

and to spread the word about what we can do to protect them.

🐝 🐝 🐝

 Bee Kind to Pollinators:

🐝 Reduce or eliminate the use of pesticides. If you must use them, use the most selective and least toxic ones and apply them at night when most pollinators aren’t active.

🐝 Plant in clusters to create a “target” for pollinators to find.

🐝 Plant for continuous bloom throughout the growing season from spring to fall.

🐝 Select a site that has shelter from wind (by trees and shrubs), has at least partial sun, and can provide water.

🐝 Allow material from dead branches and logs remain as nesting sites; reduce mulch to allow patches of bare ground for ground-nesting bees to utilize; consider installing wood nesting blocks for wood-nesting natives.

🐝 Support farmers and beekeepers by buying local honey and locally produced organic foods.

Celebrate the bees for Pollinator Week, HERE, and find buzzworthy DIYs,

and table settings to pay tribute to hard working, busy bees, responsible for 30% of our food supply.

You’ll also learn what you can do to help the bees and other pollinators.

I hope you’ll come back tomorrow join Pam and me, along with a special guest,

for Tea on Tuesdays!

☕ 🌸 🫖

Here’s a teaser of my whimsical garden tea with the flower fairies. . .

Update:

Whimsical Garden Tea with the Flower Fairies

🌸 🌼 🏡 🐝 🦋

Thank you for your visit, sharing with:

Between Naps on the Porch