Speaker 1: Welcome to the Simple Garden Life Podcast, a program dedicated
to keeping the yard of gardening simple, fun and always rewarding.
Now Here are your hosts, Jim and Mary Competti.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome everybody. I'm Jim Competti, your host along
with my wife Mary Competti. We are back, and we
are back. You know, it has been a while since
we have dropped a podcast episode for the Simple Garden
Life Podcast, but there's been good reason. We took about
a twelve month hiatus while we finished building this farm,
and boy was it an undertaking.
Speaker 3: I don't think we're quite finished yet.
Speaker 2: Now we are not quite finished yet, but we are
going to have a full slate of podcasts this spring
and summer and fall, and we're really excited to be back.
We got a lot of emails over the last twelve
months and we answered everyone but saying, hey, when are
you gonna have new a podcast? When are you going
to drop them? But we just really felt like it
was important for us to get this farm underway so
that we can handle visitors and handle all the things.
Also really put our effort into it.
Speaker 4: It really gave us a lot more experience to talk
about different things that we've encountered here at the farm.
Speaker 2: It did well. We're going to get into our podcast
today about day lilies and fertilizing them, but we do
want to remind everybody. One of the things that we
can now do and we're excited about this year is
host more events here and the biggest one we have
coming up is in April eighteenth, Saturday, which is our
Garden Conference. We go around the country a lot and
speak about gardening and vegetable gardening, and now we have
the event center and we can do it here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're bringing people to our own facility this year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So if you want information on that, you can
go to our main farm site here which is owgarden
dot com and it's right at the top header. You
can also see all about the farm and see everything
we've been doing. But hey, we're here for a podcast,
so let's get into it. And today one of our
favorite subjects really is talking about daylilies, and something people
don't think about a lot is fertilizing them. You know,
you just don't. It's not a plant or our perennial.
I should say that requires a ton of energy, but
boy can a little bit of fertilizer go along way
with them.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: If you're looking for those bright, big blooms and the
blooming bigger than ever, fertilizing really is the key.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the best time. The best time to fertilize
is in early spring. And when I say early spring,
i'm talking about when those dailies are just starting to
peek up, or even before they've even started to come
through that green. Sometimes dailies you'll get a little bit
of a warm spell we have it here and you'll start
to see a little green growth. It's still okay to
fertilize at that time, but the earlier you get it in,
the more it's going to do for your plants. And
we'll kind of go through that. We're also going to
go through some other things Mary, which is very important
of spring care for your day lilies prior to fertilizing,
and that is clearing them back and deciding whether or
not you need to, you know, maybe divide them if
they're getting overgrown.
Speaker 3: Right, that's everything that you need to do before you fertilize.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean early spring really happens to be the
ideal time to do all kinds of simple maintenance on
day lilies. It just it gives them not just a
dose of powerf for you're fertilizing, but it also cleans
up your plants and divide and transplant those overgreen, overgrown transplants,
because when they get arch, bad things happen.
Speaker 4: And I always get the question too of I don't
remember where my daily lilies were planted. So but I
bet if you go back through your photos from last year,
you probably took a picture.
Speaker 3: Or two of them.
Speaker 2: That's right. That foldleads really dies back and it's hard
to find them. But in the springtime, the first thing
you want to do, the first order of business with
your dailies is to get outside, as Mary says, make
sure you find all of them and clear that old
fooliage that has died off if you did not do
it in the fall and mulch them. You want to
clear that back now. And people say, well, I've never
done that before. Do I really need to do that?
What it allows is for your day lilies to burst
through the earth a little bit closer. And also when
you pull that back, let's you see how big they
are and whether or not you should divide. And we
get a question like how often should you really divide them?
You know, for us, it's what about every three to
five years? Right?
Speaker 4: This depends on how big of your mult bed space
that you have, depending on where or if you want
to put them somewhere else on your property.
Speaker 2: Well that's the thing. For us. We used to divide
them every two or three years because we were trying
to build up our plant stock. And you can really
get a lot of nice plants f you can really
let them go three to five years without harming or
reducing the amount of blooms. When daylies get too big,
the problem with them is that the foliage on top
gets so thick and the blooms have a hard time
and they start to be less and less impressive every year.
That three to five year mark really keeps them really
good and strong for sure.
Speaker 4: And one thing you need to do before you when
you start to clear off the areas of the old foliage,
you want to also clear off the amount of leaves
to breathe that are around those plants as well, because
they've been sitting there all winter long and you want
to get that soil warmed up as quick as you can.
Speaker 2: Yep, So before you fertilize the first thing to do
is clean all that out, get them ready to go,
and if you feel like you need to divide them,
now is the time. So we get this question all
the time. You can really divide a day lily anytime
during the growing season. Early spring, summer, even fall is
really excellent. But early spring has some great advantages. First
of all, even if they've come through the ground a
little bit, digging them up, chopping them up into even
sizes like a stea in your daily we can get
evewhere from four to eight new plants from it's not
going to harm them. Even if that foliage dies off,
it's going to come right back through within a week,
and your dayla is going to be strong. If you
do it in the early spring, especially late winter, they're
still going to bloom. Even the smaller area, they're still
going to bloom that year.
Speaker 3: Grow pretty quick too.
Speaker 2: They grow super fast, especially when you give them a
little bit of extra fertilizer. Just all you got to
do is dig around the edges. They're very durable. You
do not have to worry about this. They're not going
to kill them if you slice into too much. We've
actually before, you know, I always tell people with any
type of perennial. Dig it up, get it in the
ground that day, it's going to help it. We've let
dailies go before, they've been discarded on a pile. We
forgot about for weeks at a time, even after frost
and freeze, and still put them in and they're still
going to go. But you not recommend that. No, No,
the easier and the faster you can do it. That
that first day is really important. So so dig around
the edges, pop them up, divide them when you put
them back in. We always like to put a little
bit of compost with ours. They don't require a ton.
It's not like you have to put great potty soil.
You want to put a little bit of worm castings
in with them, that's fine, they don't need it. But
let's talk about fertilizing, because fertilizing is really a big thing. Mary,
I think you wanted to hit something right before that.
I did.
Speaker 3: I just had a quick question.
Speaker 4: A lot of people ask, too, how deep should they
dig because Daylyi's roots are not like typical plants.
Speaker 2: No, no, we can pop them out with the shovel
pretty quickly, maybe six inches down at the most. If
they're really healthy, they might go down to eight even
if they're big. So that's all you really need to
do when you're planning new ones. I always like to
loosen the soil down six to eight inches, and then
when you're replanting them, plant them so that the crown
of that is right to the soil level.
Speaker 4: Okay, so should you dig up the whole plant or
can you just divide a daily that's already in the
ground and.
Speaker 3: Just cut it in half?
Speaker 2: Pends how tired you are that spring. No, Actually, it's
always a good idea to take the entire plan out.
It keeps it nicer, it keeps it a little better. Yes,
you can chisel off some sides of the plant and
do them, but we like getting that out because it
loosens that whole root structure and then you replant. You
can replant a larger section there if you want to
keep those big. But when you go to taking other places,
you just take us sharp shovel or you know a
hoary hoary knife, which is fantastic. You can slice right
through those roots and then I said plant them in again.
So that's the same level was before. We always like
if there's a little bit of green on top to
leave that, or even a little of the dead stems
from last year an inch or so for the very
reason you talked about. I don't know where my dailies are.
But if you plant a twelve to eighteen inch clump
and you divide it into four equal slices, you're going
to get plants that year that are about twelve inches
when they mature, which are really a beautiful size, nice ballooms,
and those are going to last for three to five
years without having to worry.
Speaker 3: All right, So how to dig them up?
Speaker 4: You go around the outside of the whole dailyly correct,
you pop them out, You lay.
Speaker 3: It over and a side, and you cut it into
different sized pieces.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then you put them right in, like I said,
a little compost with them and that's it. And then
once they're in, or if your daylilies were not large
enough and you don't need to, now it's time to fertilize.
And we talk about this all the time. There are
several ways you can fertilize. We're going to talk about
what we use a lot, which is a very base
ten ten ten or a five to five to five.
But if you want to go the one hundred percent.
The first of all, there are organic fertilizers that you
can use in those ranges, but some people say, I
don't want to use any type of traditional fertilizer, So
I always tell them the go to, which is worm
castings in compost. If you're going to fertilize your DayLA's
with that. You can do it right on the surface
the same way, a few inches around the crown of compost.
I think we use what an eight of a cup
maybe per plant, per large plant of worm castings. If
you mix those two and put them in the soil,
water it in right the day you do that, whether
you're we're going to talk about regular fertilizing too, but
water in it does one of two things. If it
is a fertilizer, it keeps any any of the plant
from being burnt at all. But second of all, it
activates it compost. Yeah, so that's that's a really big key,
and you have to make sure to do that and
if it just really activates the process. So let's take
a break right now, Mary, and we'll come back and
we'll go through the actual fertilizing. If you're using a
granular fertilizer, how to do it, and then how to
take care of those daylilies through the season to make
sure you're getting the most blooms and maybe a second bloom. Okay,
we are back and we're talking about fertilizing daylilies and
right to that point where if you're not going to
go the compost and worm casting one hundred percent organic
route and you want to use a little bit of
regular fertilizer, what to use and Mary, we were talking
it to break how important it is to know what
those numbers mean in fertilizers. And this is a great point.
We talk about ten ten ten, and what ten ten
ten means really is equal amounts amounts.
Speaker 3: It's a very standardized fertilizer, very balanced. So you know
the three numbers that you'll see you'll see on the
front of.
Speaker 4: The bags or the back of the bag. So you
really want to look for that balance fertilizer. You have
ten ten ten for us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that first number of the ten ten ten
is the nitrogen. The second number will always be phosphorus,
and the third number is going to be potassium. And
each of those serve a different purpose for the plant.
Dailies are a very base perennial, very strong paranal. We
talked about it for it. Do they really have to
be fertilized to bloom, No, they're going to bloom. This
just gives them a little bit extra, a little healthier.
So that's why we said you can go with an
all purpose and all by all purpose means it's equal
numbers five five, five or ten ten ten.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and dalilies really are heavy fears. They like a
lot of nutrients and they typically get it out of
the ground. But given this extra boost will really make
a big difference in the performance of your.
Speaker 2: Daily That's correct, and that's this is a great time
to talk about with fertilizers what those numbers actually do
for the plants. So a lot of times we'll get
calls in the summer our emails about like, my plants
are bright green, my flowers, my annuals, my whatever, my
vegetable plants they're bright green, but they're not producing blooms
or flowers, And right away, Mary and I know both
right away. Almost always that means those plants are getting
way too much nitrogen, which is all about the growth
of a plant, and not enough phosphorus and potassium.
Speaker 5: Right, And if you have old old daylilies that you
don't want it to and you don't want to split,
and you like your big batch, but your flowers are
becoming less and less every year, try to pick up
a fertilizer that's less nitroten.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, a little bit heavier on the phosphorus and potassium.
But for most almost always, you can use a base
five five, five, ten, ten ten four dailas and it's
going to perform great. So how much that's a great question.
So we're going to go with that standard twelve to
eighteen inch sized daily plant. And for that, what do
we use I would say about what do you think.
Speaker 4: About an eighth of a pub which is really about
two tablespoons per plant?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we kind of do that. Daily lilies are
a clump former, so we try to do that just
right around those edges, not right on top of the plant,
because that's important, yeah, because it can burn the plant.
But again, once we put that fertilizer around the edges,
the very next thing we do is, well we actually
do two things with fertilizer. We take most of you
know what I'm talking about a little garden tool that
has a little three prongs. It's like a trough almost.
That's a great tool that once you fertilize your plants
to just kind of scrape the earth around there. It
doesn't pull up all the soil, but what it does
is allow some of those granules to get in. And
these are slow release granules that over the next two
to three months are going to feed your plants. They're
not going to give it that boost like liquid does
boom all at once. They're going to go around. But
by doing that, you set them in the soil and
then once you do that watering. It's such a key.
Speaker 4: So the ten ten fertilizer that we're talking about are
the granule granular form.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, you really want to stay away from liquid fertilizing
dailays and other perennials. You can do it if they're
struggling a little bit to give them a little boost,
but that's going to be an instant feed. You want
low and slow. We talk about it all the time,
and for perennials like a daily, you know, a slow
release granule is the way to go. It's perfect for them.
A small amount, we said, an eighth of a cup
does it really well. And then here's the key with
day lilies. You know, you water that in, you let
them go, you let them bloom. But this is where
people make the second mistake with dails to get into
bloom the next year is once your plants have bloomed
so many people just leave them on and let them
die off and let them stay all summer. And once
that do they form those seed pods. We've all seen it, right,
they take so much power from your plant plant, the
power that next year or later that summer, you can
get a second bloom. We use a lot of Stella
dolores or doors. Everybody says it a different way for us.
As soon as those blooms start to die off in
I think ours would be middle of June, we take them.
We cut those blooms back, we cut any seed heads
that for them cut back, and without fail, come July
August we get another bloom.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: And you know you can definitely fertilize this great to
fertilize first thing in the spring before spring hits, but
you also could do a early summer. What you want
to avoid is doing a late fall fertilizer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, never never do any type of perennial plant fertilizing
in the fall, because what it does is it encourages
that growth. So like a daily leaf, you did that,
it's it's gonna signal it to I need to grow more.
And that growth is the most susceptible to winter damage
around for so any of your perennials, that's just a
great little rule of thumb to live by. Never fertilize them.
What Mary's talking about with that late summer application, A
lot of people that really want to get that second
bloom when they finish blooming that first time and you
cut them back, a little bit of fertilizer again will
really help them try to try to blame that second.
Speaker 3: Time, right right, So you know we're talking about early
spring and early summer.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, So hey, listen, this has been great. We're
gonna we're gonna go out for this first podcast of
the new season, the twenty twenty six season. I can't
believe I'm saying that we're gonna drop just like we
used to one every two weeks, and we really look
forward to We got a lot of new subjects and
not of new things to talk about. And again, if
you happen to be live within an hour or two
of us head out this year to the Garden Conference.
It's gonna be a fun time. We're going to do
some speaking in the event center, some live demonstrations in
the garden, weather permitting. We have lunch served. I think
tickets are available on the site ow garden dot com.
It's going to be a fun, fun day, right.
Speaker 3: We're gonna give everybody a tour afterwards.
Speaker 2: That's right, That's right, So all right, everybody, We're glad
to be back. We hope you enjoyed listening, and for
Marry and Jim's so long everyone, happy gardening.
Speaker 6: We hope you've enjoyed this episode. Subscribe to the Simple
Garden podcast on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or most of
your favorite podcast apps. You can also head over to
simplegardenlife dot com where you can listen and read all
of the show notes to every episode.
Speaker 4: And if you have any questions, any ideas for show topics,
or if you want to share your favorite garden tip,
email us at the farm at owgarden dot com.
Speaker 6: Until next time, Thanks everyone,