Transplanting Daylilies – Beautiful Yet Tough as Nails

About three weeks ago I was visiting a friend in New Hampshire whose red and red/orange daylilies are absolutely gorgeous.  While there are over 88,000 named varieties of daylily, truly beautiful red ones are hard to come by.  So when she offered me some divisions of hers I wasn’t about to say no!

Hannah’s Beautiful Daylilies
 

Fall is a good time to divide daylilies – although these tough-as-nails plants can be divided and moved at almost any time of year without any real damage.  The ones I moved during the heat of late July, while they were in full bloom, continued to flower and quickly put out new leaves.  With a little extra water, they bounced right back from the indignities of being ripped out of their ‘home’, left in a heap on the lawn overnight, and then being shoved into a small hole in a new flower bed.

Before driving home to Connecticut, Hannah and I went out into her garden and dug up several daylilies, cut them into pieces, replanted some, and stuck the rest in a plastic bag for me to take home.  They’ve now been sitting in the bag for several weeks and, while the leaves look a little brown around the edges, they’re doing just fine.  I’ve poured in a bit of water now and then so the roots are still fleshy (although if they shrivel up, simply soak them in a bucket of water for a few hours and they’ll plump right up).  Today I planted them in key spots in the garden that need a splash of hot color during the summer and am looking forward to having a little piece of Hannah’s New Hampshire garden to enjoy each summer.

No need to pot up daylilies when moving them – simply dump them in a plastic bag, add a bit of water now and then, and leave them in a shady spot until you’re ready to plant.