I spend a lot of my summer garden days with the focus on my Dahlias. I know them well, but there is still a lot more to learn. One big trend for advanced gardeners right now is creating your own hybrids of plants. Dahlias, Zinnias and many other cut flowers cross pollinate - which is both great and complicated. While bees do their work, they take genetic material in pollen from one to another plant. Just like in humans - this opens up the door for endless possibilities of new hybrids that can bring traits of any flowers in that species. I am not sure people realize the effort it takes to keep the true traits of flowers that you purchase in every seed packet you plant. It means those zinnias have had to remain isolated to stay pure to their variety. The flip side of this, is that next season you can plant those cross-pollinated seeds you kept and find many variations of new zinnias.
Getting the first blooms is the fun part as they reveal what traits they brought from both or multiple parents. But when you find that single special one that jumps out at you - how do you preserve it? With dahlias it takes at least 3-4 years to go from that original seedling to something that has been genetically grounded and released into the commercial world. For starters, you need a lot of real estate to spread out these plants upon plants with enough room to grow. It involves controlling the pollinators - whether bees or flies. And then being able to cap off each individual bloom in cloth bags that allow sun and air into the bloom for the duration of the season until they move on to seeds for the following year. I am thinking you can grasp the scope of the hybrid process...
Which brings me to Northern Lights Daylilies. They were new to me this season. I was tipped off by some garden mates who took me to their page. They are located in West Concord MN which is a teeny town down south on the back roads into Rochester. But what a pretty farm they have. Kathleen and Mike couldn't be warmer hosts who were glad to share many stories of their breeding. Their main emphasis is on creating new varieties and from what I can tell, they sell only via internet sales. They don't seem to be connected to any local garden centers as middlemen. From the website, they are certainly high-end with small batches of collector's items that can get as pricey with a $150 tag on them. Past releases are in the $15-$20 range. It also seems like a garden club where registered shoppers get access to the new varieties for the next season before they go on sale to general public - which accounts for the high prices.
But my experience with them was on the one weekend in late July where they open a single field to the general public. As I noted at the very beginning; you let the bees do their work and see what treasures you have the next season in new seedlings. Since the lilies are a perennial, those roots will continue the same stock going forward. They have 3-4 long plots where they allow them to stabilize and regenerate over a period of years. Each year they rotate a single plot. After monitoring and cataloguing traits over a 3 year period, they pull the handful of special varieties that they feel are ready to be introduced and then take on the task of regenerating them from root stock into enough viable plants that they are able to sell as a new named Lily. You can see why they have that high pricing for the first few years until they can build a large enough offspring to meet demand.
For the general public on that last weekend, they open what is left of the plot for eager gardeners to come and grab whatever plants remain at a pittance of $6 a clump. And they are big hearty clumps that have been nurtured for years! For whatever reason; the color was not brilliant enough/ they may not have been as resilient to MN winters/ stems were not sturdy enough. On the Friday morning I drove down, there were around 15 cars parked on the side of the gravel road and avid gardeners with their pitch forks going down the aisles of blooms to see what jumped out at us.
I feel like my garden has so many oranges and golds as well as blues I am drawn to. So I found a few in different shades. One is a deep tomato red with a brilliant yellow core and bright yellow frilly edges. Looking at their website, I am thinking it was from the family called Christmas Morning that must have had some shortcomings. But they are big blooms on very tall stems. I also found a stunning plum pink with a lot of texture that must have been from the Apple Candy breeds. And then a simple, short ruffled banana yellow that was more plain but somehow spoke to me. I am aware that they had a brutal few hot days of road travel until they made it home and then went into the ground during another of our hot spells in MN. But each of them managed to hold buds and all have a few remaining flowers blooming. So I have full confidence they will be massive come 2027. But what fun to know I have 3 unique, beautiful types of daylilies in my plot called NL#1, NL#2 and NL#3 to add to my plant data base. Anyone looking for a garden field trip next summer should check out the farm.
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