The Trouble With Lilies

The storm system that pounded Oklahoma is now driving our weather.  Thunder and lightening with torrential downpours and fierce winds were with us.  Our power outage lasted only a few minutes and the tomato plants were twisted about.  The tomatoes have been righted with only one torn stem showing the hammering that they took.  This storm's impact on the lilies will hit tomorrow night.

The monster storm from the south has been blocking cold air from the north.  The hot system will pass by opening the door for the mountains of cold air that have piled up.  We can expect three nights of freezing overnight temperatures beginning tomorrow.

The lilies have loved all of the rain and the warm air growing daily.  Some will no longer fit under the buckets that have protected them from earlier frosts.  The orange spotted lilies shown above will fit under the new trash can but the leaves will contact the sides of the can.  Flower buds should be safe but the leaves in contact with the sides of the can may burn if the temperatures are low.

Our two surviving Farolito bulbs are confined to one pot.  This lily has buds now.  If common sense held any sway here we would get rid of this lily as it blooms way too early.  This pot will be lifted again and spend the next three cold nights in the basement.  That may not sound so bad but the three gallon pot is filled with water saturated soil.  This old man will have some trouble pulling this pot from the ground by its rim.  I wonder what combination of colorful words will fill the air with the attempt.

These Simplon lilies have exceeded their catalog description in height by a factor of two.  Last year they exceeded six feet tall.  The original three bulbs now number six mature bulbs with many daughter bulbs potted up in the sod house.  The new can will not cover  all six plants.  It would have if the plants had grown straight up from where I placed the bulbs last fall but that did not happen.  Some combination of two shorter buckets may provide the necessary frost protection.  If we can get safely past this next period of frost, these six plants will produce more than one hundred huge pure white sweetly scented flowers over a period of several days.

Thirty-three pots of lilies fill the sod house.  These plants are still short enough to cover in place with a tarp.  The browned leaf tips are scars from an earlier frost experience.  New leaves have grown out above the damaged leaves and by the time the flowers appear no one will notice the low brown leaf tips.  We always remove the plants from the pots when we set out the lilies in the garden trying to preserve the structure of the clump.  This year I expect that we will have more than one clump fall apart as it is shaken from an inverted pot.  More colorful phrasing is expected.

Twenty different varieties of lilies too tender to grow here cannot be justified by any logical explanation.  We really should grow fewer, but a new variety purchased this spring is just now breaking the surface in its pot.  What combination of color and scent will this new arrival tease us with this summer?  Therein lies the problem.  Lilies are simply much too beautiful and sweetly scented to not exist here.  We will have to face this year the overwhelming numbers of daughter bulbs that will appear.  How many lilies is too many?

Baby It's Cold Outside

Weather wise this has been a nearly normal spring.  Seasonally cool temperatures have many of our more tender perennials just now breaking the surface of the soil.  Still, with last night's low forecast to hit 24 F we had to break out protection.  A single large tarp covers thirty something pots of lilies.  Here we get a lot of protection with little effort.  In the background several wire cages containing freshly scooped leaves are intended to insulate newly emerged plants from the cold.  The leaves were surprisingly hard to find.  Strong winds preceded the cold and removed most of the leaves.  Only those held in place by ground briers or brush were free for the picking.

Our welded wire cages are intended to protect plants from the rabbits or the deer.  Here one supports a tarp over the lettuce plants that were set out way to early.  Still, the tarp is quickly and easily placed held by water filled juice bottles.

Despite the forecast, we found the air temperature just above freezing this morning.  These lettuce plants may have looked just as good if we had left them uncovered.

My passion for lilies has handed me more than I can manage.  These orange spotted lilies are out in the garden and were covered with leaves and a bucket last night.  The reddish leaves spring from mature bulbs that will flower this year if they are protected from late frosts.  The green leaves sprout from daughter bulbs that will flower next year.  Several of the mature bulbs could be potted up now so that they could be moved into the basement for protection on cold nights.  Since four pots of these lilies are now in the sod house and more of these lilies grow in two others places in the garden, there is simply no way that I can save them all.

Sod Lily House

Our fascination with lilies has been tempered with failure after failure.  Despite catalog descriptions of plants hardy to zone 3, most of our newly purchased bulbs would die.  The problem was not mid winter sub zero temperatures but spring frosts.  Early frost would blacken newly emerged green shoots while late frost would kill the flower buds.  Covering the plants when frost threatened was possible only if the cover would fit between other plants.  Otherwise the choice was to protect the lilies while smashing their neighbors.  Then the issue was the sheer number of required covering cans.  There had to be a better way.

This is version two of a system to protect the lilies.  Three gallon plastic pots were purchased to hold single transplanted lily bulbs.  Buried up to their rims, these pots will winter over in a protected spot.  Shaded from low winter sun, this area should be late in building spring soil warmth.  That should delay emergence of the lilies for a few days.  If the snow cover is scant, we can shovel extra snow on top of the lilies.  When spring does come, the entire lily bed can be covered with a tarp if frost threatens. As a last line of defense, the pots can be pulled from the ground and carried to the basement.

We had a first version of this system last year.  The new sod walls on three sides are intended to make it easier to place the tarp.  These walls need to be higher in order to cover the taller lilies in late May but that can wait until spring.  For now we must get ready to plant the garlic by week's end.  Then we can finish  bedding the lilies down for the winter.