THE CHALLENGES
The 2004 gardening year was a challenge, and quite disappointing
for us, to say the least. The most outstanding (almost
bizarre) point I found, was that our heavily mulched
lilies were the first to sprout up, a full two weeks
sooner than those not mulched. I find this bizarre because
typically, the mulched areas sprout a full two weeks
LATER than unmulched areas. The only reasonable explanation
I have heard for their contradictory behavior comes
from my husband, who says there was no frost under the
snow at all, throughout the winter, as we received a
heavy snowfall early in the winter which provided a
cozy insulating blanket for the lilies all winter long.
As he does excavation for a living, he is completely
familiar with ground, soils and all their charactaristics
The lilies were all coming on quite strong
and looking very good until mid May, when we experienced
a heavy, killing frost - not unusual in itself, but
the fact that the lilies were already approaching six
to eight inches in height was! Of course, this frost
did some heavy damage to the majority of lilies, and
the LA hybrids in particular. Since the flower buds
are already formed within the tip of the stems, even
at this early stage of growth, I knew we were unlikely
to enjoy the beautiful show of blooms we are used to
in mid July. I was not too disappointed yet, as we have
lily beds throughout our acreage and not all were sprouted
up or suffered the heavy frost damage apparent in the
mulched beds. I expected we would still have a glorious
bloom season for the end of July and early August.
Our next challenge came in the form of
drought danger. Although we had above average snowfall
through the winter and early spring, it melted so fast
in April that more ran off than soaked into the ground.
Spring winds contributed to the soil drying out quickly,
and I realized by the end of May we were going to have
to irrigate all the newly planted beds if I wanted them
to sprout up and grow normally - the majority were still
not showing themselves by this time. Low and behold,
Mother Nature answered our prayers for rain in the first
week of June - but with it came damaging hail! We received
one inch of rain in under 45 minutes, ending in hail
that damaged the lily foliage, including our potted
stock.
In mid June we had another killing frost,
but this one only seemed to damage the already suffering
LA hybrid lilies (turning some to mush), the rest appeared
to have only suffered minimal damage that I thought
they could recover from. We also continued to receive
on average, one inch of rain per week, almost always
in a heavy downpour - this weekly trend continued until
mid August, I might add.
The real disappointment came at the beginning
of July, when it hailed hard again, and started to rain
and continued to do so for 9 days straight. On about
the 5th day I noticed the lily stems were looking odd,
went for a closer look and was horrified to see that
Botrytis had set in, in
a big way. It was pointless to spray
anything as a control as the rain had not stopped yet.
By day 9, the majority of the lilies that had suffered
frost damage previously were a horrible mess, and I
knew they would NOT be providing a beautiful show of
flowers this year! I was able to control the botrytis
and prevent it from getting any worse in the other areas
by spraying Rovral, but it was immediately apparent
that our flower show was not going to live up to my
expectations and I canceled our Open Gardens event as
a result. I also knew this meant I was in for a huge
amount of cleanup work in the Fall, to get rid of all
those botrytis ridden stems
and foliage, and spraying the ground to prevent infection
the following year.
NOTES ON HARDINESS TRIALS AND SUCH In the end, it was not a great year to evaluate
lilies here in central Alberta. But everything bad has
a good side too, and I was able to get a very detailed
list of what was disease
resistant and what was not. That too is an important
consideration for garden lilies, as there are many parts
of the world where high humidity and rain are the norm,
and lilies are in demand to grow under those particular
conditions.
All of Dick
Bazett's lilies (planted in Fall 2003) survived
and bloomed for us in 2004, escaping much of the Botrytis
damage until later in summer. Golden Surprise,
his hardy trumpet x asiatic only sprouted up to about
6 or 8 inches, and unfortunately did not bloom for us.
I suspect the early drought they suffered had much to
do with their failure to bloom. I am anxious to see
how they will perform in 2005 for us though! All 5 Orienpet
varieties he sent us also survived the winter, only
one bloomed for us (Regal Star) while the others
lost buds or grew deformed or blind due to botrytis
and/or frost damage. These orienpets were planted without
any mulch in order to evaluate hardiness. I will continue
to evaluate these in future.
I planted more aurelian x asiatic crossed
lily bulblets from Ivory
Belles and Silky
Belles in Fall 2003, to an exposed, unmulched
area and they all grew and some even tried to bloom
this past summer, but I pinched the buds in order for
them to conserve bulb energy in their first year. Our
established beds of the Belle series appear to
be thriving, despite the constant climate changes and
unpredictable weather. They are propagating on their
own now, after 3 years in the ground.
The orienpet bulblets from Northern
Star which were planted in Fall 2002 also returned
and many sent out one bud in their second year of garden
growth. These were also pinched off so the bulb could
grow. I am very hopeful that this may be the future
of propagating orienpets naturally here for us. I find
the orienpets very slow to establish here, in general.
Leslie Woodriff,
one of the first varieties planted, has just begun to
increase on its own, one bulb sending up 2 stems this
spring. It has been in the ground since the year 2000
and has not been disturbed at all since then. Each year
the bud count has increased however, so we know the
bulb is getting bigger! Easter
Morn I was unable to evaluate this year (regarding
propagation on its own), as the many leaves sent up
at the base of the established clump died off due to
botrytis early in the season. All were firm and appeared
healthy in the Fall, so I'm certain they will return
for another attempt this coming spring.
The last noteworthy comment I have to
make for the 2004 season has to do with the bulb depth.
During my bulb harvest, I was positively amazed to find
mother bulbs in one bed had pulled themselves to a depth
approaching 16 inches or more below ground level - I
had to get out the track spade to dig! These were originally
planted at a depth of 4 to 6 inches for asiatics and
LA's, 8 to 12 inches for orienpets. This is a raised
bed, approximately 8 to 12 inches of a sandy soil mix
was used on top of existing sandy, rocky soil. This
is also the bed we used to trial the product MYKE
on, when first planted in spring 2002.
I'm a little baffled by the possible reasons
why they would have pulled themselves down so far. I
am fully aware that lily bulbs will do this - but what
MAKES them do this? After pondering the idea for some
time over the winter, I have come to the conclusion
that they must have pulled themselves down in order
to cool themselves and in search of moisture, because
of the years of drought since they were first planted.
I'm not so sure this is a good explanation though, as
this bed was irrigated throughout the summer of 2002,
and heavily mulched with bark to conserve the moisture
in the same year. There was some harvesting from this
bed in Fall 2003 (it was perfectly moist and not dry
at all), and the bulbs were not noticeably any deeper
than the year prior, so why now? We certainly did not
experience drought this summer! In fact, with all the
moisture I found I had to delay digging in many areas
because the ground under the mulch was so saturated.
Did they go downward through the summer, or did they
spend their previous winter going down? I don't think
they did so through the winter as I did some digging
here in early spring and didn't find them unusually
deep at that time. When I did find the bulbs way down
deep this past season, I was positively gleeful at their
size and condition, being huge and healthy!
Fred Fellner
had warned me in mid July that all varieties where botrytis
had hit early, would experience little or no bulb growth
over summer, and this was confirmed during my fall harvest.
The areas where botrytis
was not so evident, and in new beds planted in fall
2003, bulb size was large, no doubt due to the high
moisture levels this season and high drainage capacity
of our soil. I was told by another experienced lily
grower that she found once lilies had been hit badly
by botrytis they seemed
to be affected and/or infected with it consistently
from that point on. Others that I have repeated this
to have disagreed, saying if they seem susceptible in
years following an outbreak, it is only because good
cleanup was not carried out effectively. I guess I'll
find out firsthand this coming summer, and I'll be sure
to post the results I found here on the site once again.
Until then, good growing to you and yours!
