As I mentioned in a previous post, I was surprised to find a scape on one of my daylilies in mid-April. That’s only happened once before. I didn’t get any early blooms from it because it was quickly wiped out by a late spring snowstorm. ‘Jen Melon’ was set to beat the record for earliest bloom this year, but the weather interfered once again.
We spent all of late March and most of April with temperatures running 15 to 20 degrees above normal. Even gardeners started to get a little overconfident, dreaming of setting out their tomato plants a month early. Then everything screeched to a halt and it was as if we flew backwards in a time machine. For the last 2 weeks we’ve “enjoyed” temperatures of 15 to 20 degrees BELOW normal with lots of rain. I peeked at my scape last week and discovered it was rotting. I cut it off.
What I didn’t know is that ‘Jen Melon’ was not ready to give up. It quickly sent up 2 more scapes just as robust and loaded with blooms as the first. This morning when I pulled up the shades I could see a little yellow flash in the corner of my flowerbed. ‘Jen Melon’ has blasted the earliest daylily blooming record by 3 weeks.
The weirdest thing is that ‘Jen Melon’ is supposed to be a mid-to-late-season bloomer. In my Zone 5 garden, that translates to late July.
If my independently-minded daylily wants to bloom 10 weeks early, who am I to argue?