Daylilies as Cut Flowers--Who Knew?

Rose Emily

How many of you think of a daylily as a cut flower? Strangely enough, even though John and I have always grown daylilies at Pittsgrove Farms and are used to cutting all kinds of flowers from our gardens to fill our vases, it wasn't until recently that we discovered how well they survive indoors.

It came about by accident when John was transplanting some large clumps to put in one of our new display gardens. He cut back the divisions and I rescued the stems that he had discarded and put them in a vase. Much to my surprise, not only did the blooms look lovely in the vase, but as the blossoms faded and I plucked them off, they were replaced by continually opening buds. We had a great display throughout the week.

I guess we had never really given much thought to them as a cut flower since in all the years that we ran a florist shop at the garden center, daylilies were never available as a cut flower. Debbie, our friend at The Rose and Radish Fine Florals in Whitehouse Station, NJ said although the daylilies we gave her and her partners to observe bloomed magnificently, they would not work in the cut flower market since people are too lazy to remove the faded blossoms. Her experience has been that many people, especially in the corporate world, want fresh flowers to act like silk flowers and remain beautiful without doing anything to them, such as changing the water in the vase so it doesn't smell like a septic system (that last line is mine, not Debbie's!).

Frosty Beauty & Rose Emily with Cleome and Zinnea

If you are reading this blog, you are, in all probability, a gardener who is not at all afraid of hard work. Providing fresh water and plucking off dead blooms will be a piece of cake for someone who likes digging in the dirt like me. So do yourself a favor and bring some of those daylilies indoors, impress your friends at your next dinner party, or just give your family a treat of a mixed flower bouquet at the breakfast table.