May - Gardeners of Wake County

Volume 32
Edition 5
Gardeners of Wake County, Inc. – Raleigh, NC
MAY 2016
GARDENERS OF WAKE COUNTY PICNIC
he GWC will host our annual
club picnic at 6:00 on
Tuesday May 17th at Mark and
Joanne Boone’s home. Their
address is 4401 Dewees Ct. in
Raleigh, located just off
Ebenezer Church road. The
house at the end of
Dewees Court is
your destination.
T
Catering is provided by Pam’s Farm
House. The menu
usually
includes
barbeque chicken, beef tips
with rice, cole slaw, string
beans with new potatoes, sweet
corn, hush puppies, biscuits,
ice tea and lemonade. If you
have not already paid Ginny
Parker you may do so at the picnic. The charge for members
will be $6 per person, and $15
for non-members. You are invited to bring either a dessert or
appetizer to share.
There will be a plant exchange
and raffle. For the plant
exchange, members typically
bring 2-3 plants, with a
note or label including a description.
The plants are
lined up, the members line up, and we
‘race’ to select our
favorite. Most of us
‘race’ at a casual pace,
although my 7 year old son may
go zipping past you. He has
been anticipating this event all
year.
Many of us have more to share
than room to plant. This is an
amazing oppor tunity for new
gardeners to get robust plants
CLUB MEETINGS
Meetings are at 7:30pm at the
JC Raulston Arboretum every
3rd Tuesday.
that thrive locally for free.
Ceramic or porcelain pots will
be raffled off with tickets sold
for $1 each or 6 for $5.
Raleigh Hemerocallis Club
2016 Show
hinking about all the free
plants at our GWC plant
exchange reminded me about
another great way to get cheap
plants, particularly if you like
daylilies. Last year we were
shopping at Crabtree Valley Mall
and stumbled upon the annual
show of the Raleigh Daylily Club.
T
(continued on page 2)
Inside This Issue
GWC Picnic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 1
Board Members. . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 2
Committee Members . . . . . . . . . Page 2
How Many Plant Clubs to Join . . . Page 2
Hybridizing Daylilies . . . . . . . Page 3
Lakeview Daylily Farm . . . . . . Page 3
Page 2
MAY 2016
BOARD MEMBERS
President. . . . . . . Sherrill Johnson
Vice President . . . . Paul Hoffmann
Secretary . . . . . . . . Donna Farmer
Treasurer . . . . . . Norman LaRusch
Immed Past Pres.. . . . Mark Boone
At-large Board . . . . . . . . CJ Dykes,
Paula Hoffman
Jim Moore
COMMITTEE MEMBERS
The Clod-Hopper
It was the greatest surprise to
find something I really liked,
plants, at the mall! The show
has hundreds of daylilies that
are grown by club members on
display, and they sell large
bundles of daylilies for $5. I
think they also threw in a
bunch of free plants when I
star ted spending big (like
$20). All of the daylilies I
planted are thriving and I can’t wait to see them flower this summer.
Activities Chair. . . . . . . Mark Boone
Audit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gary Jewell
Azalea Sale . . Joann Hammerberg
Beautification Awards
Will & Donna Farmer
Club Awards . . . . . . . . . CJ Dykes
Endowment Investment . Rick Tate
Friendship . . . . . Bob & Judy Allen
Historical . . . . . . . . Dick Lankford
Membership . . . . . Barbara Brown
Newsletter Editors. . . . . . . . . . . .
Steven & Laine Thomas
Nominating . . . . Vivian Williamson
Programs . . . . . . . Paul Hoffmann
Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vacant
Publicity . . . . . . . . Charles Gilliam
Refreshments . . . Sharon LaRusch
Scholarship . . . . . . Joanne Boone
Telephone . . . . . . Johnny Johnson
Webmaster . . . . . . . . . Jim Wilson
The Clod-Hopper
Published monthly by The Gardeners
of Wake County, Sherrill Johnson,
President; Laine & Steven Thomas,
Editors.
Formatted and printed by
Piedmont Litho, Inc.
For membership information or to
change your address contact
Barbara Brown, membership
chairman at the address published
in the membership directory.
Club Website:
www.gardenersofwakecounty.org
The show is coming back soon! It will be hosted again this year at
Crabtree Mall on Saturday, June 25th, on the north end of the mall,
below the food court. It will feature 200 to 250 specimens of some
of the prettiest daylilies from member gardens. Many of the club
members are hybridizers with named cultivars. The array of options
to view and purchase is pretty amazing!
HOW MANY PLANT CLUBS SHOULD A
PLANT GEEK JOIN?
I found the per fect club with GWC. The variety of programs and
member interests is just what I’m looking
for. But the more I garden, the more
oppor tunities I find to explore specialties. We are ver y lucky to live in Wake
County where there are so many options.
One could attend the Nor th American
Rock Garden Society or the Triangle
Bonsai Society. This month, I’m interested in Daylilies. So here is
some information on the Daylily Club:
They meet the second Tuesday of each month from February
through October, at Powell Drive Community Center. Meetings begin
at 7:15. The May meeting includes a club auction of newer daylilies.
This might be chance to get unique varieties at even better prices.
In June they have a Garden Picnic, at the home of Richard and Janet
Warren. Interestingly, their home was in the path of the tornado that
hit Raleigh a few years back. They lost a number of trees which provided more sunshine and allowed them to extend their daylily garden. Their home is also likely to be on a club garden tour in 2017.
The August meeting will feature Raymond and Wanda Quinn who
have been turning 10 acres above the Cape Fear River into gardens
with emphasis on daylilies. Wanda focuses on hybridizing daylilies
for the perennial garden, and Raymond focuses on creating unusual forms, bold and unusual color. They will share the experience
from the recent season of hybridizing and garden development.
The Clod-Hopper
APRIL 2016
Page 3
HYBRIDIZING DAYLILIES
Seeds that are harvested too
early will not germinate. Remove
the seeds and let them air dry
overnight. Put in them in small
containers in the refrigerator for
4-6 weeks. Don’t freeze them.
Step 4: Plant the seeds
between ¼ and ½ inch deep.
Seeds require fairly warm soil
temperatures to germinate, so
in North Carolina we would probably start the seeds indoors,
under lights or windows, during
the winter and then transplant
them outside in spring.
usually work on my laptop next to my son, while he falls asleep.
Tonight I was working on the Clodhopper. In fact, I was scrolling
through daylily hybrids when he popped up from half-slumber and
said “Mom, you’re not working! You’re looking at flowers!” I corrected him; it was important research for the newsletter. I
explained that local gardeners created these hybrids by mixing two
daylilies with each other. “Wow! How do they do that?” he asked.
“I don’t know. How about I write an article about it and tell you in
the morning?” I suggested. We agreed. The following is adapted
from http://www.ofts.com/bill/hybrdize.html.
I
Step 1: Select the flowers you
want to cross. There are two
types of daylilies, diploid and
tetraploid. They are hard to tell
apart and they don’t mix, so take
note when you buy something.
Otherwise you have to experiment and expect some failure. If
you become an expert you might
select plants to cross based on
very technical attributes. If you
are reading this, you are probably
not an expert. So start with the
advice of the late Elsie Spalding
(a famous hybridizer) and “just
put pretty on pretty”.
Step 2: Make a cross. The
flower needs to be fertilized to
make seeds. Take pollen from
one of 6 stamens on the first
flower and place on the tip of
the pistil of another flower that
you would like to cross. It is
best to do this when the pollen
is dry and fluffy, around midmorning. Do not remove the old
bloom, but let if fall off on its
own, leaving a green seed pod.
Step 3: Harvest the seeds.
Leave the pod alone until it
begins to split open (40 – 60
days after the flower drops).
Step 5: Wait…
Does this process seem easy
enough for a 7 year old? I
thought so, until I learned that
daylilies grown from seed may
not bloom until the second or
third spring. I’m not even sure I
have the patience to work this
hard and wait 2 years to see the
result. Will my 7 year old give it
a shot? He intends to. I finished
this article and the newsletter
around 11:30 pm and fell
asleep at 1:00 am. I awoke at
6:30 to the sound of scampering feet. Greyson ran right up to
my
bed
and
exclaimed
“How?!!!” Through a fog I indicated no idea what he was talking about. “How?!!” he nearly
shouted, bouncing up and down
next to the bed like it was
Christmas. “What are you talking about? How what?” I finally
mustered. “How do you make
the plants????” he explained.
Oh sigh!! “Let me get a pot of
coffee going and we can discuss hemerocallis hybridization
at breakfast.”
Mac Williamson
1408 Lake Pine Drive
Cary, NC 27511
Change Service Requested
Page 4
MAY 2016
The Clod-Hopper
LAKEVIEW DAYLILY FARM
After 30 years with the City of
Raleigh, NC, he retired as its
horticulturist. During his tenure
with the City, he found that of
all the parks and highways he
planted, daylilies were most
rewarding landscape plant.
Lakeview Daylily Farm was begun
his daylily farm, located in
Garner NC, is open only in
the coming months of June and
July, on Fridays through Sunday
9:00-4:00 or by appointment.
Noel Weston hasn’t been growing daylilies all his life, but
sometimes it seems that way!
T
with large quantities of cultivars
that Noel liked best for large
plantings and with fewer of handselected cultivars from the garden of Ray and Wanda Quinn.
After several years of multiplication, they opened the garden
commercially in 1989. After five
years of working all week and
digging flowers on weekends,
Ray and Wanda have retired
from the garden to concentrate
on hybridizing (and their day
jobs!). Now Lakeview Daylily
Farm is a family operation with
approximately 1000 cultivars.
I’m really looking forward to visiting Lakeview this summer.
Daylilies thrive in our yard,
despite clay soil and too much
shade. Yes, daylilies are supposed to be sun loving plants,
but I’m impressed with how
beautiful and productive our
plants are, even in part shade.
I’m hoping to add fragrant
daylilies, which are abundant at
Lakeview.