Thursday, July 31, 2008
Daylilies need constant work
John Arbogast
Landscape consultant John Arbogast answers your questions every Thursday. Send questions about your lawn, garden, plants, or insects to:
Dear John
5102 Greenfield St. SW
Roanoke, Va. 24018
Or send an e-mail. Answers will be given only in this column. Please don't send pictures or samples.
Recent columns
Q: I have numerous Stella d'Oro yellow daylilies that bloomed beautifully this spring and early summer. Now they seem to be finished. I've seen other gardens with a multitude of daylilies that seem to bloom all summer. Is the Stella d’Oro only an early blooming plant? What other varieties would carry on through the summer/fall?
A: The Stella d’Oro daylily variety was possibly the first daylily that claimed to be ever-blooming. This was a much-welcomed daylily variety introduction, since daylilies were popular short-time bloomers up until then. There were even sub varieties developed from the Stella d’Oro to give more ever-blooming choices. In my opinion, the most notable new Stellas were the Dwarf Stella, a lower growing yellow bloomer, and the Black Eyed Stella, which produces a dark center in each yellow bloom like a Black-eyed Susan.
Unfortunately for many gardeners, including me, Stella d’Oro daylilies have been planted in anticipation of season-long yellow flowering, only to get disappointment with strong blooming in the spring like many other daylilies have done for years and then only sporadic yellow blooms here and there for the remainder of the growing season. Let me suggest some things that might help prolong the bloom period for Stella d’Oros as well as for other short-bloom-time daylilies.
Dead-bloom continuously. This is labor intensive work, but well worth it. The common name “daylily” was given to this perennial, since each flower is opened only for a day. So, if you decide to do this chore, plan to go out to the landscape late in the afternoon or early evening, take sharp scissors and snip off each faded flower to keep it from forming seeds.
Fertilize daylilies annually with a water soluble high phosphorus/low nitrogen plant food for blooming plants in mid to late spring.
Water Stella d’Oro daylilies repeatedly as needed from spring until early fall.
There are numerous daylily varieties and hybrids in addition to the Stellas that have been bred to provide low-care blooms from late spring through late summer. I do not have a current list of daylily varieties and hybrids that can be grown in the same landscape to provide summer-long color.
For more information on daylilies including “awards and honors”, I suggest that you go to the Web site of The American Hemerocallis Society at http://www.daylilies.org and going through their long menu of topics available.
Q: I live in central West Virginia, and am pretty much overwhelmed trying to determine what type grass seemed to just suddenly show up in my yard. The grass has a blue-green appearance, is very thick and soft as carpet (nothing grows through it). At first I thought the small patches that appeared were a blessing (looks great in winter), but it has become thin and brown underneath. It appears to have stolons, which seem to give it the brown appearance. Also it does not grow as tall or as fast as the fescue in my lawn, but it is slowly taking over. I have decided I don't like it very well, and I need to get rid of it, but I have not been able to identify it. Do you have any idea what has invaded my lawn and how to get rid of it?
A: All the descriptive things about your invader grass are traits of Creeping Bentgrass, the quickly spreading grass that produces surface-growing runners called stolons to form new plants. Its characteristics make it well suited for use primarily on golf course putting greens, tees, bowling greens, and grass tennis courts, but not residential lawns. Creeping Bentgrass produces a fine-textured, soft, extremely dense, carpet like sod. However, I am not sure how Creeping Bentgrass would just suddenly show up in a residential lawn. It does reproduce by seed and by stolons.
However, the fact that this invading grass just showed up in your lawn made me think of the prolific grass called Annual Bluegrass or “Poa,” the name most often used by many professional turf managers. Annual Bluegrass or Poa reproduces quickly by producing numerous seeds, thus behaving more like a perennial grass than an annual. This grass does not make stolons, though.
These are just my professional guesses. Accurate identification of unknown plants must be made through thorough examination of a fresh whole plant with root system. In the case of grasses, complete seedheads, if available, are helpful for identification.
Killing a grass growing in another grass is difficult. Spray all actively growing green parts of the unwanted grass twice with the non-selective herbicide called Roundup, which is not a restricted chemical here in Virginia, but I don’t know about its status in West Virginia. This should be done 3 to 4 weeks before a good turf seeding time allowing 2 weeks between applications. Remove dead grass, prepare each area, and reseed.
