Friday, May 27, 2011

A Bed for Tender Loving Care

Oh my, this post sounds like it's either going to be a country song or a sappy novel.  Actually, it's a report on my project of digging daylilies I "parked" last August in dense spacing at the Green Center.  I used the empty space in one of my seedling beds after I had cleared out everything that wasn't selected.  The selected ones stayed where they were.  My house was on the market and I needed a place to store my daylily collection over the fall and winter.

Last August, this planting scheme seemed like a good idea.  I thought I would have that bed cleared out by the end of April.  But April proved a very wet month, and I only began the job this morning, at the end of May.  Fortunately, the soil in that seedling bed has been amended so much over the past decade that it digs really easily.  Less fortunately, plants that get started early in the spring shade the plants that get started later.  Everything is more lush than usual, thanks to all the rain, so the early risers have provided total darkness for the late risers.

This morning I had to set aside the late risers in their own pile.  The plants were really puny!  I came home for lunch and told Kathy I'd have to create a zone of TLC in part of the garden just for those small plants.  I only wish I weren't setting them out in ultra-dense clay.  However, they will get full sun, no shade from larger plants, and lots of moisture.  The first batch are in the TLC bed now.  I imagine there will be many more.

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