In 2016 I started using different plant labels and plant markers in my garden. It all started when I got a recycled Brother P-touch labeling system. I immediately made few labels and put them outdoors to test them over the winter before I made any major changes. The labels looked great in the spring so I went ahead and changed my labels. I tested the labels for another year, just to make sure they stood up to the elements, and they most certainly do. So now, in 2018, I feel comfortable saying 'thumbs up' to these labels.

The P-touch can use different colored and different sized labels, but I typically use the one-half inch size (.47" to be exact). I always order the white, laminated, indoor/outdoor labels. (The indoor/outdoor part is important if you plant to use these for your garden.) You can get some competitive pricing on eBay. P-touch has different type sizes so in case you have a plant with a really long name, you can still fit it on the label. My labeling system is older, but I'm sure there are many more features available on the newer models.

I also switched to Kincaid plant markers, which I had seen and liked in a garden that I visited. The Kincaid name plates are stainless steel and the posts are made of heavy-duty #10 gauge steel. The posts come in all sizes and shapes depending on your individual needs and likes. I purchased the eight-inch posts, which is just a personal preference. I like that that the markers aren't super obvious in my flower bed, but if I need to know a plant's name, I can easily find it. Every fall I put a tomato cage around each one of my daylilies to protect them over the winter from deer trampling. The cages provide a dual purpose in that the plant markers are protected as well. If any markers are out in the open, without protection, I usually push them down into the dirt for the winter.

So far, this labeling system has withstood the extreme fluctuation of temperature in Wisconsin and the weather has not had any effect on either the labels or markers. Both my labels and plant markers still look brand new, and not one has been crushed. In addition to me, three of my friends have also switched over to this plant marker and labeling system and we are all very happy.

Note: The labels are also great for household and garage use. They are an organizer's dream!

Brother P-touch label machines:  https://www.brother-usa.com/home/label-printers/series/p-touch
Kincaid Plant Markers: https://www.kincaidplantmarkers.com/

You can always count on "Integrated Logistics" to be showy and bold. This is one of the seven daylilies I grow hybridized by Curt Hanson in Ohio. I also grow Bela Lugosi, Black Falcon Ritual, Jerry Hyatt, Lounge Lizard, Primal Scream, and Virginia B. Hanson. They are all hardy and prolific plants in my Wisconsin garden.

Integrated Logistics, introduced in 2005,  is a semi-evergreen tetraploid that grows 37" tall and has 6" plus blooms. The flowers have a beautiful rose watermark and are pleated, which is a form of sculpting in which the petals fold upon itself creating a raised platform on the bloom. You can see how the petals narrow in the close-up photo.

Integrated Logistics is a very reliable and consistent plant. In summer 2018, bloom season was from July 10 through August 28 (including re-bloom). You can't ask for more than that!

It's hard to believe it's October and time to put my garden to sleep for the winter. Fall clean-up has been a bit challenging this year. We've had many days of rain, and my days off from work have not always coincided with the nice weather. I finally had some great gardening days last week, despite the fact that I had to wear my winter coat.

Here are a few of my routine fall garden tasks:

• Remove any annuals that I don't want to re-seed. As you can see from the first photo, I removed dozens of marigolds. Not to worry, I still have dozens more blooming that keep my yard looking very autumn-ish. And yes, it's hard for me to pull these pretty annuals out of the ground, but it has to be done. There's only so much re-seeding I want to deal with next year.
• Transplanting - As all of you gardeners know, gardening is a trial and error experience, and I excel at trial and error. Consequently, there's always an ongoing transplant list waiting for me.
  
• Replace/re-do any rock borders that have cracked or fallen apart in our landscape, or re-situate the rocks where the moles have made them heave. Dang moles!
• Complete a thorough weeding of all my flower beds. I am always thankful I did this when spring arrives.
• Trim all the plants around the perimeter of our home to make sure no mice or rabbits decide to take up residence over the winter.
  
• Place a tomato cage over each one of my daylilies to protect them from getting trampled by the herds of deer that frequent our yard. The deer can do a lot of damage and the tomato cages really do help, especially with the new transplants.
• And finally, cleanup all of my garden tools and storage cabinet.
  

Every fall I make a point of giving my daylilies what I call their 'medical' checks. I like to examine each individual plant, pull out any weeds, determine that no moles have tunneled under or around them, and make sure that squirrels haven't buried any walnuts close by. When I do checkups I occasionally find a proliferation on an old daylily scape.

"A proliferation is a leafy shoot from a node or bract found on scapes of many cultivars. Small roots often form and occasionally a flower is produced while the proliferation is still on the scape. (Definition from the American Daylily Society.)

For those of you who are unfamiliar with daylilies, their seeds are not identical to either parent plant. A proliferation is one way to get an exact replica of the plant you have (in addition to plant division). I have had good results growing daylilies from proliferations. In fact, I have huge daylily clumps growing in my garden that started with just one tiny proliferation! It's also a fun way to share plants with friends.

When I find a proliferation I cut the scape off of the plant and place it in a plastic cup of water to grow roots. I have found that the roots will grow quicker if you use a clear plastic cup (as opposed to an opaque one). Important: Be sure to keep the water in the cup clean. The roots generally grow large enough to plant in a week or two.  I like to leave a good portion of the scape on both sides of the plant. When I eventually plant the proliferation in dirt, the scape gives the tender new daylily stability. The scape above the dirt will eventually dry up and fall off. I leave my proliferations in a pot for a few weeks to form roots, and from there I place it in the ground. In two or three years the proliferations pictured will bloom and look exactly like the beautiful 'Red Volunteer' pictured in the first photo. 

I have grown 'Red Volunteer' ever since I can remember having daylilies. It is reliable, consistent, big, tall, and gorgeous. In addition to other awards, Red Volunteer won the 'Lenington All-American Award' in 2004, which goes to one daylily each year voted the best performer over a wide geographic area. This midseason, dormant tetraploid was hybridized by William Oakes and introduced in 1984.   My plant grows 38" tall and the blooms are 7" or more in size. It is a definite wow! There will always be a place for Red Volunteer in my garden.

These little creatures visited my garden for quite a while before I found out they were not a type of hummingbird – they were actually a moth! The hummingbird moth in the photo is a 'Hemaris Clearwing' (the most common kind). Your chances of seeing them are better if you grow Phlox, Bee Balm, Butterfly Bush, Honeysuckle and/or Verbena in your yard.

Hummingbird moths are more plump than hummingbirds, and grow approximately two inches long. The Clearwings are usually a reddish brown/olive color. Like hummingbirds, these moths make humming sounds when they hover around flowers. What makes them unusual is that they have a very long tongue that they keep rolled up under their chin; when they unroll their tongue they can reach nectar inside flowers that many other insects can't.

The females lay their eggs on plants, usually on the underside of the leaves. The caterpillars are green, so they blend in with the foliage. When they are fully-grown they drop to the ground and spin a loose cocoon. The pupa spends the winter well hidden and the adult emerges the following spring. In northern climates there is only one generation per year.

The white garden phlox pictured is 'David.'
Credit for the photography goes to my husband Ange
Credit for the hummingbird moth information: butterflywebsite.com

It's mid-September and I only have three daylilies still in bloom. Due to the rain we've had recently, I was unable to spray deer deterrent regularly and the deer managed to eat some scapes of my late bloomers. But I am happy to report that for some odd reason the deer spared 'Suzy Cream Cheese.' This award-winning spider daylily is a late-season bloomer I would never be without!

Suzy Cream Cheese was hybridized in Ohio by Dan Bachman (who was possibly a Frank Zappa fan back in the day?) Suzy started blooming on August 21 and is still in bloom today. The flowers are an impressive 7" in size and the plant grows about 35" tall. The scapes always remain upright and never bend or droop. The flowers have good substance and the hot sun doesn't bother them a bit. Both of these photos were taken late in the afternoon on a 90 degree day. Suzy is a dormant diploid that thrives in Wisconsin. If you are a northern gardener and want lots of late-season bloom, Suzy Cream Cheese is a gotta-have.

When I look at photos of my daylilies, I notice many details that I don't otherwise see on my garden walk-throughs. In fall I enjoy taking the time to review all the photos I've taken throughout the summer and revisit bloom season through my camera's lens. This year I made a point to get more up-close photos to capture the minutiae of each bloom.

My cover girl this week is "Mexican Magic." This cultivar has a most unique and pleasing color combination of pale orange and purple with a deeper orange throat, plus the delicate ruffled purple edge adds a perfect finishing touch! As striking as this particular daylily is, I think every daylily is beautiful in their own special way. I posted a few photos below just to prove my point.

Daylilies pictured after Mexican Magic are: Bluegrass Music, Man of Sorrows, Sabine Baur, Wild Child, Magnificent Rainbow, Nip Me, and J.T. Davis.

In spring, a kitty we had never seen before started patrolling our little piece of paradise. It was hard to miss him with his snowy white fur and ginger spots. Talk about skills; this stinker scaled the trees like a squirrel! He also liked to check out the inside perimeter of our garage for mice. Some days, he followed me around the garden, curious about what I was doing.

Here's the funny part...there are actually THREE of these guys, and they all look quite similar. I did a triple take the first time I saw all three of them together. After I paid attention to the details I could easily tell them apart--love those raccoon-striped tails. Sometimes their mom comes along on patrol, too. There are, after all, lessons to be learned.

Cats that patrol our yard live in the barn across the road. The triplets' mom is Penny-Kitty, who I did an earlier blog about.

I knew 'Pork Barrel Spending' would be a hardy daylily even before I got it in the ground. Last September, a few weeks after I had purchased and potted up my two scapes this bad boy was trying, in earnest, to escape its pot. (See photo below) What a unique plant this turned out to be! The large 8" blooms are are well-branched so they look really pleasing when many are open together on one scape.  There are always darker veins and spots visible on each petal, which makes the petals look kind of iris-ish.  The blooms are both consistent and weather-resistant.

Pork Barrel Spending is a Wisconsin daylily hybridized by Nate Bremer and introduced in 2013. It is a dormant tetraploid that grows 31" tall in my yard. It is also categorized as a UFo Cascade, Crispate, and Spatulate. I was very pleased with this daylily's performance; for a first year plant it bloomed from July 3rd to August 5th. By year three it should be nothing short of amazing.

American Green Tree Frogs and daylilies go together like toast and jam. The frogs arrive in late July and early August. Gotta love these little guys; they just sit and patiently wait for their meal to arrive. They often stay on the same plant for days at a time and just move to a new bloom each day. When I deadhead my daylilies it's important that I pay attention and be very careful so that I don't accidentally fling a tiny frog into outer space.

A few of the daylilies pictured include: Sabine Baur, Spanish Glow, She's Got Legs, Techny Peace, and Webster's Pink Wonder.

Okay, I admit it...I bought 'Three Bad Pigs' because I loved the name! Over time Three Bad Pigs has proven to be more than just a catchy name; it is a consistent and prolific plant. The colors are vivid and the beautiful blooms look like my photos all day long. This summer it produced 27 scapes and bloomed like crazy after a merciless winter. Blooms started on July 6, and as of today it still has a few more blooms to go.

Three Bad Pigs was hybridized by Gene Tanner and introduced in 2008. It is a dormant tetraploid that has 5.5" blooms and grows 28" tall in my garden. This is a South Carolina plant that has acclimated perfectly to Wisconsin. As for the name? According to the Browns Ferry Gardens website, Three Bad Pigs got its name after three pigs got loose and had a 'good time' in the hybridizer's daylily beds.

I am completely in love with the daylily 'Music Monkey.' Hybridized in Wisconsin by Phil and Luella Korth of Pinewood Gardens, this showy, dormant tetraploid was introduced in 2007. It is categorized as a UFo (Unusual Form) crispate (floral segments that have a pinched or folded effect). The 7" blooms are waxy and thick. Sun, humidity, rain, or wind don't bother this monkey; he always looks great. Occasionally the sepals twirl and the bloom actually looks like it's dancing! Last year Music Monkey grew 31" tall and bloomed in my garden from July 9 into the second week of August.

Music Monkey was one of my husband's picks, using his 'pretty picture' method of choice. Who knew it would be so awesome? And it surely can't hurt having two award-winning parents like Primal Scream and Unending Melody. If you are a northern gardener, and love oranges like I do, you can't go wrong with Music Monkey. I like the catchy moniker too.

Where do I start? Maybe with died-and-gone-to-daylily-heaven? I spent Saturday with my friend Roger walking one of his seedling fields. This particular field had between 8,000 and 10,000 daylily seedlings. (And yes, you read those numbers correctly.) It was nothing short of amazing! In addition to his magnificent home garden, Roger also keeps two large seedling fields, each in a different location, on extra acreage that friends let him plant on. They, of course, get the added benefit of a beautiful landscape full of flowers.

Roger is an American Hemerocallis Society (AHS) certified daylily garden judge. When he hybridizes, he aims for specific outcomes when making a cross. He keeps in mind parent genetics, bloom color, pattern, size, and substance, branching, bud count, foliage, scape strength, and many other specifics that determine what a good cross may be. Green eyes are one of his favorite bloom traits that he often hybridizes for.

Our main task was to methodically go through the garden and choose the seedlings that we thought showed the most promise. We also tagged some 'put in the compost pile' seedlings. He appreciates other people's opinions, because with 10,000 seedlings it's very easy to overlook a plant or two. And as daylily aficionados, we all like and value something different.

It was a daunting task at first, but for each seedling that caught my eye, I asked myself, 'Does this plant have the wow factor for the characteristics I value?' Everything I loved got tied with pink vinyl tape that had my initials on it. And believe me, there was no shortage of pink tape being used. Here are photos of *just a few* of the seedlings I loved. I stand by all of my choices and I would totally bring any one of these babies home to grow in a heartbeat.

We also did a little bit of pollen-dabbing with some bloom pollen from my garden. It was fun determining which plants to make the crosses with. If only the units on genetics and plant biology were this much fun in school I would have paid more attention.

'Greedy Governor' was part of last year's mission to add more red daylilies to my garden, a color that I didn't have much of. The Gov's first blooms, on June 27, were greeted by extremely high humidity and unrelenting 98-degree temperatures. Being a red (some of which are notorious for melting in the hot sun), the flower substance still looked good in the evening, if only just a bit lighter in color. I thought the lighter look was pleasing, as well. Greedy Governor is categorized as a dormant tetraploid unusual form (UFO) cascade, crispate, spatulate. The blooms are large (8.5") and I love the way the sepals twirl and curl.  In the bright sun the blooms have somewhat of a yellow-orange cast to them and the diamond dusting appears to make them glow. Oh the details! I tried to capture this with my camera but didn't have much luck.

I can see that Gov is already growing taller (29") than expected (26") and this is just year one. No worries;  that can be easily remedied with a future move. From what I have observed so far, I think this will be a hardy, happy plant no matter where I put it.

Greedy Governor was hybridized by Nate Bremer of Solaris Farms in Reedsville, WI and introduced in 2013. I grow a few other Bremer daylilies and they all perform very well in my Zone 4B Wisconsin garden.

As I patiently wait for my daylilies to bloom, I am definitely enjoying my Asiatic lilies in the interim. Here is a hardy and reliable mini I grow named 'Tiny Padhye' (pronounced Pad-high). This cutie was a gift I received from a friend about six years ago. I got the bulbs in early March and placed them in my refrigerator until mid-May when I planted them in the ground. As you can see, they really took off!

This bi-color Asiatic was developed the Netherlands. You can grow it successfully in full sun or part shade (mine are in full sun). It is an easy-care plant that lives in normal, sandy or clay soil that is neutral, alkaline or acid. This variety is also showy in containers, rock gardens, and in front of the border because of its petite size. Tiny Padhye grows approximately 16" to 18" tall. They are said to be deer resistant, but I can't be sure about that since I regularly spray deer deterrent on all of my flowers. The deer in our area seem to eat just about anything and everything. I take no chances.

After a long winter, which continued through the month of April, gardening in Wisconsin proves to be an exercise in delayed gratification. And there's nothing whatsoever I can do -- Mother Nature has the reins. My job is to move the plants around, get rid of the weeds, add mulch, and wait. Looking around the garden, I see lots and lots of scapes, but hardly any flowers yet. Is it really the end of June? The *wait* part is getting harder and harder by the day. So it looks like delayed gratification isn't my only issue; add whining to the list!

Pictured is my old faithful 'Moonlit Masquerade,' one of only four daylilies blooming in my yard on June 24.

I came to the conclusion that I run a round-the-clock resort and spa for rabbits. And it must be five-star, because my yard is infested -- moms, dads, babies, the entire extended family -- they are all here. Accommodations are luxurious: a thicket to hide in, expansive play areas with dirt to roll and dig in, warm rocks to lounge on, water to primp and wash, and a decadent buffet of fresh perennials and weeds that are always available. No room service needed here.

A monumental negative; my resort is not gated. I have seen foxes abduct guests on numerous occasions. Coyotes lurk as well, not to mention the hawks and eagles that soar overhead, looking for a quick meal. And then there's the road... 

Should I post a warning?