Columbia River Daylily Club

Guest Speaker

David Cox Soil Builders

Our guest speaker will be David Cox, owner of Soil Builders in Ridgefield. David started Soil Builders in 2002 and has spent the past six years composting mulches, potting soils and developing a 3-way outdoor mix. David uses manures rather than yard waste as his basic material. The output is a humus rich, fertile soil builder that improves our clay soils. David takes pride in producing a compost that makes plants grow better and the feedback he receives is proof that it works! His compost is approved and used by the Washington Park Rose Garden in Portland and is used locally by Akins Iris Gardens. David is going to bring samples of his products and he will explain why his compost is superior to others. You’ll surely come away with a better understanding of composting and the importance of microbes. It should be a great learning experience and maybe you’ll be lucky enough to go home with a sample to try on your own. You can reach David at 360-921-7256.

President’s Letter

Mary Mannix

Hi Daylily Friends,

This has been a different garden year for me. Daylily bloom came later than usual, and some simply didn’t bother to bloom. Some had spectacular rebloom, the blooms being far superior to the previous blooms. I pray for rain, in vain. When others across town go a good hard rain that did some good, I got a sprinkle. I am busy cutting the foliage back so I can see what I have, and deciding what is going to go to auction, sale table, or friends that take them off my hands. I got a little carried away on the email daylily auction. While I got a lot of flowers at really good prices, now I have to find a place to put them. The fall is certainly the time to hit the auction because there are so many things available, people simply can’t bid on everything. I got a few recent introduction by Frank Smith. I have no idea how they are going to do here, but I plan to find out. I would like to have him as a speaker, but I want to make sure his plants will do well in the Northwest before inviting him. If anyone grows his plants I would love a report. I also got Trimmers FASHION POLICE and WORLD TRAVELER. With all of these new things to put in there will be lots of changes in the look of my garden. What FUN!!!

I certainly hope you have had a good summer and GREAT garden year. Time to put the garden to bed, and look forward to next year.

 As we have our fall auction this next meeting don’t forget to bring some plants to share with others, while helping the clubs finances. It is also your opportunity to take home some new additions to your garden.

Our Yard Garden and Patio Sale coordinator, JoAnn Opp, will be giving you a call for assistance at the sale. Please find the time to help the club in this manner. Help us give others the opportunity to share our companionship and the fun of learning about and growing daylilies.

Our club has a web site. It is www.columbiariverdaylilyclub.org

Check it out!

National Highlights

MaryAnn Borcherding

This was my first trip to a Nation AHS Convention. It took place in Houston, Texas, May 14 -18,2008. It was quite exciting. JoAnn Ferguson and I joined force and decided to go. We had made our plans early, in fact I was number 69 to register and Joann was 79. We beat most of the Texas folks. I believe there were approximately 400 that signed up so there were quite a few people to manage. There were 8 buses. I’m sure this took major strategic planning. There were 8 gardens on tour. We went to five on Friday and four on Saturday.

Our day started with a 4:30 AM wake-up call, breakfast at 5:30, load the busses and be on our way by 7:00. Tour gardens, eat goodies at each one, lunch in-between, tour gardens, eat goodies, get back on the bus, get to the hotel, attend seminars at 4:30 PM, go to room, “freshen up”, get to the dinner at 6:30, go up to our room at about 10:00 PM, and try to sleep! By the second day I felt zombie like at 10:00, but after eating more cookies and ice-cream I managed to finish the tour gardens for a second day and an evening just like the first. JoAnn won two beautiful daylilies, and she received Region 8’s 2008 Service Award. Hooray JoAnn, I was happy for her, but thought that I should have won the daylilies. I did buy some doubles from the sale table, and we received two bus plants. One was COLOR ME HAPPY, Mary Gage 2000, and LONE STAR WAGON WHEEL, Payne 2004. Both of which will make a lovely addition to my garden. All of the tour gardens were quite lovely, with a wide variety of daylilies. Some gardens were home gardens and some were daylily nurseries. I enjoyed seeing flowers that were from local hybridizers,and some distinctly Texas ones that we probably would never see up in the PNW. The home gardens were inspiring, I wanted to come home and use some of their ideas. The yard art was so “Texan” It was quite fun. There were many cowboys made of various materials, armadillos, “Boot” hill, “Blue” Spruce trees. All in great fun. My favorite was the pair of 6 foot pink flamingoes dancing on the state of Texas. They were replete with hats, scarves, and boots. I wish I would have gotten them home. Since I have been home I have ordered LINE DANCER, a lovely spider from Paynes in the Grass Daylily Farms. He had several intros that I liked. The Payne’s had a wonderful swimming pool with a very large tiled daylily on the bottom with floats of daylilies ‘swimming” in it. Of course the most impressive was the Imperial’s garden. It was a paradise of daylilies, tropical plants and wonderful yard art, koi pond, orchids and too many other sites to mention here. It was right on a lake and it was thrilling so see so many tropical plants.

JoAnn and I stayed an extra day and rented a car. We visited the open gardens of Bill Jarvis and Mike Peppers. Both were lovely home gardens. Bill Jarvis loves to hybridize. He has some real standouts. He doesn’t sell his plants, but he likes to give them to gardens that are going to be on tour. I’d be on tour just to get some of his seedlings. We also visited the Mercer Arboretum. This was our last stop and the temps were rising, so our tour through was abridged to say the least. I did come home with a wish list, some older and some newer varieties. I absolutely loved KIVA DANCER, HALLOWEEN MASQUERADE, BACK SCRATCHER, PEPPERMINT PINWHEEL, RAPID EYE MOVEMENT, LILLY AND PETALS, GREG GLIDDEN, BOOT IN' BEAUTY, and TIJUANA TREASURES to name a few. When I go through my photos again I will add more to my must haves.

Texas hospitality was beyond my expectations. Everyone was amazingly polite and courteous. The Texas club members did an excellent job of hosting and ensuring all our needs were taken care of. My first National was a rousing success and I would go to another one in the future.

KIVA DANCER, Roberts 04

                                                                    BOOT SCOOTIN BEAUTY, Carpenter 07

TIJUANA TREASURE Carpenter 04

Puget Sound Daylily Club Tour

I think everyone would agree that this was a very strange year for weather and in turn for daylily bloom. I noticed the blooms started out at about the same time as last year, but they came on slower. A LOT SLOWER. So much slower, that VELVET WEB (Lambertson) was still blooming 30 days after its first bloom and it’s now starting on rebloom. By mid-August when bloom is normally over, I still had enough bloom to notice the color in the gardens. Even as we approached September, I still had several late bloomers putting on a show and even had a couple that were putting up rebloom, something I didn’t expect after the weather we experienced this year.

In spite of the strange season, I still had some nice blooms this season. I couldn’t possibly pick a favorite, but I especially enjoyed ROCK SOLID (Stamile). I am looking forward to seeing the babies from this cross. OK, who am I kidding? Truth be told, I’m looking forward to seeing my many different crosses I made this year. It’s hard to wait 2-3 years before I see them. With the season over, it’s time to start collecting seeds, which I’ve been doing since late July. Each year I experiment with something new, from new annuals to new potting soil to new germinating practices. This year, I’m germinating in perlite. The 4” pots are sitting in water and the trays are sitting on heating mats. Once the seeds germinate, they will sit in diluted liquid fertilizer. It’s sort of the concept of hydroponics, but the water doesn’t drain out and the plants don’t seem to mind. Pickens for the deer are pretty good at my house this year, or at least that’s the idea I get from the doe that has been hanging out in the yard all summer. She eats the hardy geranium leaves, the hardy fuchsias, roses and some of the weeds, not to mention the raspberries and various vegetables in the garden. So far, she has chosen to leave all the daylilies alone. I guess I should feel fortunate. I don’t know if I should replant with deer resistant varieties or keep the things she likes so she’ll focus on those plants and continue to ignore the daylilies. I would hate to ‘force’ them to try them and find that they’re really quite tasty. I’ve cleaned up the beds by cutting back the leaves and I’m making room in the greenhouse for my new babies that are coming in the mail almost daily. It’s time to rotate things out into the yard and I would estimate that I’ve moved about 50 new plants outside. It’s always exciting to get new plants in the mail. I love coming home and finding a new box to open. I will spend all winter waiting for the fantastic bloom I expect next summer. Does anyone have a daylily that bowled them over this season? Email me a picture and I’ll put it in the newsletter to share with everyone else. We’re always interested in daylilies look great in our climate. Thanks for sharing!

Our club has a web site. It is www.columbiariverdaylilyclub.org

Check it out!