Lilyfield Farm

Wouldn’t it be neat to have a blue tinted lily like this?

Or 1000 rainbow roses?

Or seeds for this green daylily?

The previous flowers are all fake or scam items for sale online, the sellers have put up images that don’t reflect reality.

Economics of a $1.00 packet of seed.. In Canada costs will start at $2.00 for postage and packaging materials to mail seeds that are protected in a bubble mailer, let alone the value of the seed. Consider the $1.00 blue lily seed with free shipping, 475 sold, all fake. Putting that money towards quality legit seeds or a vanilla latte at Basket-Full may be a better option.

Plant breeders are working towards advancements like blue and multicolored. It takes time. There are daylilies that have blueish purple in them. There are lilies that have more than one color on a petal, just not like that photoshopped rose image.

Now on to the actual seeds. Yes, a buyer will probably get seeds in the mail from the sketchy online source. They may be for a field crop or lawn. People order daylily seeds, and they turn out be canola seeds. Rainbow rose seeds, that are rose seeds, when they bloom do not resemble a rainbow.

Pretty easy to put grass or coriander into little baggies and mail it off.

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Here, seeds are carefully made, crosses recorded, shelled and sorted.

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Ask a seller for pictures of the seed and what their growing practices are.

Now where to buy seed?

Join the North American Lily Society and buy lily seeds from the exchange. They have discounted prices for their older seed.

Buy off of The Lily Auction which is a site for daylily seeds.

You can find many legitimate sources for seed on online. Look for seed sellers or exchanges in your province or country. If it is too good to be true, it probably is.

We list here on the website as well at these links on Ebay and Etsy.

Introducing Prairie Elevator, at almost 4 feet it is a hardy daylily with 25 buds on 5-way branching. The cream yellow petals with a tangerine eye are lightly diamond dusted. The nocturnal blooms open up the evening before bringing open blooms for your morning stroll, coffee in hand. Strong scapes come out of healthy green foliage. Prairie Elevator has survived, and thrived out in the open prairie with no extra care.

At day 14 after planting these seeds and 15% came up. At day 17, 50% are up. Lily seeds take their time and your patience. They are worth it. Growing from seed gives you a one of a kind flower that no one else will have. Just like humans, each seed is different. No clones here. Continue reading to find out how to grow lily seeds.

Growing Lilies From Seed.

Step 1. Get Seed

a. Save seed produced by your own lilies. That is what we do at Lilyfield.

b. Access seed exchanges through the Royal Horticultural Society Lily Group or The North American Lily Society.

c. Buy seed from a source. Lilyfield seed here.

d. Trade seed with a friend.

Step 2. Saving Your Own Seed  – Go to step 3 if you are buying seed.

We candle all our seed to give the best chance possible for germination. Candling involves back lighting seed, then selecting only those seeds that have a visible embryo. All seed we sell have visible embryos.

Step 3. Plant Your Seed

Fill clean, pots that have drainage holes with moistened soil-less mix. (Potting soil, seed starting mix or your own favourite blend to start seeds in). We do a mix of peat moss, vermiculite and perlite in bleached containers.

Plant seeds 1 cm below soil surface. Cover with mix and pat down. Cover container with a bag or dome to make a mini greenhouse effect at room temperature. Once sprouts show, 11-21 days, put underlights or in a window.

Once they have sprouted, keep the top of the soil slightly dry, bottom watering is best. If there is a damping off problem, spritz with a bleach water mix. Air circulation is important

Step 4. Plant Seedlings In The Ground

Once the seedlings are big enough plant them outdoors. We usually do ours from July through September. Mark them with a label so you don’t forget where they are. Wait a couple years and the flowers will start coming! Enjoy!

This year we are only selling our introductions. After a too wet summer in 2016, which led to disease and then a cold winter in 2016-2017 which saw most of the commercial daylilies die out, it was easy to make that decision.

Of note one daylily, Notify Ground Crew handled the disease and cold like a champ. As well its hundreds of babies are alive and thriving while thousands of seedlings and hundreds of cultivars around them died. We have our first introduction in 2018 out of Notify Ground Crew. The nice and tall KC ON A HILL!

On the much shorter side is the drought resistant NEXT YEAR COUNTRY appropriately named for farmers!

We will be listing daylilies for sale just as soon as they start greening up! Right now everything is still hiding underground.

Hope you had a good winter and are ready for things to be green and growing!

 

Just so you know, we are not planning on selling lily bulbs this fall.  We are focusing on breeding botrytis resistance lilies only at this time. A big boost was receiving plants from Albert hybridizer Fred Fellner.

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