The 70s Were Good for Something

This year I decided I would try to keep track of the first and last day of blooms for each of my daylily cultivars. I figured if anything, it would give me something by which to judge them. Garden space is getting tighter and tighter and if I discover any more daylilies I’ve just gotta have, I’ll have to start making decisions about which ones to dig up and give away.

My collection includes cultivars from all different decades, but very few of the newest ones since they are so pricey. When I added up the statistics from my little project, I was surprised to learn that my top three longest bloomers this summer were all registered in the 1970s. The winner was ‘Jersey Spider’ (1973). It has only been growing in my garden for one year, but it managed to send up blooms on and off for 52 days. In second place was ‘Double Cutie’ (1972) at 45 days. (Had we not had a freak snowstorm this past April, ‘Double Cutie’ may have outlasted them all. It had a scape on it in mid-April already which is very early for Wisconsin. Sadly the snowstorm did enough damage that the first scape didn’t survive). Sneaking in for the bronze was ‘Cedar Waxwing’ (1979) at 42 days.

When it comes to daylilies, newer doesn’t always mean better.