A New Daylily and Iris Bed

Last week I put together a daylily and iris bed to cultivate and divide more plants for my little plant nursery.  Daylilies and irises are great plants for any garden since they offer so much for so little.  They grow strong without too much attention, enjoy the sun, and are tolerant various soils - which is good since this area has quite a lot of clay!

My daylily and iris bed is a small one but will be expanded onto later.  It's about 12 feet long and 4 feet wide.  I tilled it first - which was a challenge since it was on a slope, then raked it smooth and tried to remove any grass clumps left behind.  Ideally I would have located it on level ground but I wanted to keep the level areas of the yard open for three crazy children that need room to run.  Who knows when we'll need to turn the backyard into a baseball diamond, volleyball court, or kickball stadium?  Kids need room to run! The bed itself is leveled and sloped inward toward the hill to allow water to stay present in the bed a little longer.  Sloped areas have a tendency to dry out faster than you would like.



A month ago I picked up several highly discounted daylilies.  At $1 per pot it was hard to pass up.  I divided (more on dividing daylilies) the three pots of 'Fragrant Returns' into about 15 plants and one pot of 'Entrapment' into 4 and filled up a row.  I added a few more divisions from my garden including 'Primal Scream'

'Primal Scream'

(which is awesome) 'Crimson Pirate' and an iris called 'Solar Flare'.  There's still room in the rows but it's really amazing how fast it all fills in!


I used some old tomato stakes that i broke in half as plant markers for some of the daylilies.  I didn't have enough stakes to label them all so the re-purposed mini-blind tags were used for some.


I have quite a few unnamed irises that need divided so it won't take long before I need to add more area to this bed.  I may have to terrace the slope in some fashion to make it more usable for my growing needs!

'Crimson Pirate'

I'm continuing with my plans for hybridizing daylilies and irises.  I did some experimenting this year and successfully managed one cross between 'Crimson Pirate' and another daylily.  Most of my other attempted were foiled by the dry June weather we experienced.  I didn't label the cross and so I don't know the other daylily.  Currently I have two seedlings growing from that cross.  There may not be any value to that cross what so ever aside from the hybridizing learning experience. But you know, knowledge is valuable!

Beginning the New Front Garden

I mentioned several weeks ago (a couple months ago) that I was wanting to remodel my front garden. I was mostly speaking of the area directly in front of the house but since then an additional idea popped up. There is a small area around a Bradford pear tree that I envisioned an elongated oval shaped bed. Eventually that ornamental pear tree will be removed (it's bound to split one of these days!) and I'll replace it with something else but a little farther away from its current location. Making this new garden bed will create a wide pathway between our front garden and the hillside in the front of our house. The pathway will direct the view toward the arbor and the self-sowing garden. It will also give me a place to move several of the plants that will be coming out of other areas.

Here's another view of the new garden spot. You can't see it really well in the picture so I highlighted it in black lines for you. When making a new bed there a technique I like to use with my bagging lawn mower.

• First I drop the wheels down as low as they will go yet still be able to roll across the ground. 
• Then I mow the shape of the bed. The low mowing height will go a long way toward killing off the grass in a chemical free way.
• Afterward I gather grass clippings and pile them onto the new bed area as a mulch. I'll pile them on as high as I can then let them dry. 
• Once the grass is dry I can come back with a nicer mulch to enhance the area. I use newspapers under any layer of mulch to prevent weeds from popping through. It's a layered bed but the technique is often called lasagna gardening.

Until I get around to it or have the time to get mulch I'll pile on more grass clippings. Dead grass clippings make an excellent source of organic material. They decay fast and really create some heat when thrown in the compost bin. I placed two bags of grass clippings in my bin the other day and was amazed at the heat they helped to generate - and heat in the compost bin is a good thing!

I'm beginning with the preparation of the bed now so that I can plant a few things this fall. Have you started any new gardens lately?