The Freeeeeze!

Hello Daylily Friends,

I went to the Greenhouse yesterday morning, and to my surprise, I saw an "emerging shoot" growing from LORI'S BLOND CURLS, Plant #1.  I immediately took my small tools, and dug through the soil to the site from where the shoot began growing.  I then cut the shoot because I know from long experience that a shoot will ruin even the best of conversion work that can be done with a daylily.  Then, I left the place where I made the cut to dry for about 24 hours, and after this, I again covered the area with soil.  I am so glad that I found the shoot when I did.

To emphasize the importance of what I did with Plant #1 of LORI'S BLOND CURLS, I want to tell you about another daylily that I treated that was just a beautiful plant.  I had cut it perfectly, I had followed all of the steps in treating the daylily that I've written about here on this blog, but then this daylily started to go "backwards."  That is to say, the plant began to have a diminished
growth pattern.  To put it plainly, the plant was reversing its growth pattern, and seemed to become weaker by the day.  I thought about what I was experiencing, and I decided that there had to be an "emerging stem" that I couldn't see.  Sure enough, the treated plant soon died, and so I dug away some of the soil and my suspicions were confirmed.  There was a good sized growing stem that had not yet grown through the soil.  So, I was right.  Here is the point:  If you've treated a daylily with Colchicine, and then the daylily seems to lose its push to convert to a tetraploid, there is often a growing stem that is hindering the process.  The strength of the plant is going to the growing stem, and not to the part of the plant that you've treated.  I'm showing two pictures to confirm what I've experienced.  The first picture shows the diminishing growth, and the second picture shows the death of the treated area, but with a growing, healthy stem from underneath the plant.

Well, when I last reported here on the blog, the temperature here in Marietta and Kennesaw, Georgia, had gone down to 6 degrees.  Then, this extremely low temperature stayed low for about 35 hours.  Although I had done all that I thought that I needed to do to protect my "Well Water," that supplies my Greenhouse and Gardens, I just didn't do enough to get through the many continuous hours of freezing temperatures.  I had to call my friend Dave Ward from D. W. Water Systems to come and repair my Well.  This is no easy task since my Well is 350 feet deep, and my pump is at the bottom of the Well.  Dave came and helped me as he promised, and now I again have water in the Greenhouse.  What a relief.  When the
water pumped again my Granddaughter and I were just "giddy with joy." Basically, what happened was that one of my pipes froze, then the water system came on so as to water the Greenhouse, but the pump in the Well could not pump water because of the frozen pipe.  This caused the pump to "short out," and this led to a big, expensive problem.  Thanks Dave for all your help!

More news soon.

Bill