Daylilies are beautiful plants that many people love keeping in their yards. You might have some in your garden areas or you might be using them as border plants in certain spots.
Either way, you’re going to want to do your best to take care of them properly. Daylilies bloom from the early spring until the early days of autumn.
Once it starts to get a bit deeper into the autumn months, the daylilies aren’t going to look so vibrant any longer. If you’re new to caring for them, then you might not be sure what you’re supposed to do during this time.
Keep reading to learn about proper daylily care in the fall. These tips will show you what you’re supposed to be doing so that you can have the best experience.
You Don’t Have to Cut Back Daylilies in the Fall If You Don’t Want to
Many people think that it’s necessary to cut daylilies back in the fall. It’s not going to be a bad thing to do this, but you don’t necessarily have to if you don’t want to.
If you don’t cut them back during the fall, then they’re just going to stick around even though they don’t look the best. They’ll be kind of brown and it’ll just look as though you have decaying foliage in your yard.
Most will agree that your yard will look better if you choose to cut them back and clean things up. Keep reading to learn about some of the advantages to doing so.
Advantages of Cutting Daylilies Back in the Fall
There are numerous advantages to cutting your daylilies back in the fall. Perhaps most importantly, it’s going to ensure that you’ll have less work to do in the spring.
When you’re trying to get things ready for the daylilies to grow and bloom again, it’s going to be easier if you decide to cut them back. If you didn’t, then you’re going to have to clean things up in the very early days of spring.
It’s also going to be wise to cut them back before winter sets in so that you don’t have to deal with pests. Many types of insects will use the wilted daylilies as a nesting spot if you don’t take care of things.
When you don’t cut the daylilies back in the fall, it could lead to you having more bugs in the yard next spring. That could be somewhat problematic, and it’s another reason why taking the time to cut them back is the right choice to make.
You can also choose to divide the daylilies if you have plants that are far too big. This means that you can have more of them spread out over a wider area.
How to Cut Daylilies Back
The actual act of cutting the daylilies back isn’t too complex overall. All you really need to do is take the time to cut them down using some sort of cutting tool.
You generally want to cut them down until they’re only a few inches away from the ground. You can do this manually with standard hedge trimmers if you’d like to go that route.
It’s going to be even faster to get the job done if you use electric hedge trimmers. Either way, you just need to cut the daylilies close to the ground so that things will be ready for the spring.
If you have a compost bin, then you can throw the decaying foliage into it. It should decay pretty quickly and it can be utilized as fertilizer later on.
Tips for Dividing and Transplanting Daylilies
The autumn will be the best time to divide and transplant daylilies that have grown too big. If you have huge daylilies, then you might want to consider dividing and transplanting.
You see, daylilies that have grown too big will have fewer blooms. They won’t be full of blooms when they’re that large and it just makes sense to divide them so that you can enjoy them at their best.
Dividing the daylilies won’t be tough when you know how to approach things. After you’ve cut things back close to the ground, you’re just going to dig them out using a spade.
Typically, daylilies will be about three inches deep in the ground, but they could be four inches deep. When you’ve dug them up, you’ll just have to divide them.
Use your shovel to divide them into sections. It’s best to try to divide them into even sections when you’re trying to get the best results.
Now you just need to transplant the daylilies to get them back in the ground. Use some of the existing soil when transplanting and put them a bit deeper in the ground than how they were when you dug them up.
Fill the soil in and pat things down gently to put the daylilies in place. You can add compost to the bottom of the hole if you’d like to help the roots to set up as quickly as possible.
Before finishing, place a layer of mulch around the daylilies. You want the mulch layer to be about two inches thick.
When this is done, you’ll just have to wait until the spring to see the fruits of your labor. In some places where the temperatures stay somewhat warm in the fall, you might see a bit of new growth during the fall months.
Keep Caring for the Daylilies During the Spring
Once spring has arrived, it’s going to be time to start caring for the daylilies as usual. If you do a good job of taking care of them, then you should be able to see superb results.
The daylilies that you divided and transplanted should do very nicely if you did things right. You might see that things will grow a bit faster if you bothered to place compost in the hole with the transplanted daylilies back in the fall.
It’s definitely going to be worth it to do this if you love daylilies. Cutting them back in the fall is the best option because you won’t have a lot of work to do in the spring.
If you chose to wait until the spring to do anything, then you’ll need to spend time trimming and cleaning things up right now. You’ll have to get them ready so that they can experience new growth.
It’ll also be prudent to look out for bugs since there might have been bugs hiding out in the decaying foliage over the course of the winter months. You can still enjoy them even if you didn’t cut them back in the fall, but you’ll just have to do more work in the spring.
Final Thoughts
After reading the tips above, it’ll be easier for you to figure out what you want to do during the fall. You can cut the daylilies back to just a few inches above the ground in the fall to get them ready for the spring.
Your yard will look better overall if you decide to do this. The daylilies might become a home to many insects during the cold months if you don’t choose to cut them back properly.
It’ll also be smart to divide and transplant the daylilies that have become very large. Really big daylilies don’t bloom all over due to being too large, and it makes more sense to divide them.
Yes, it’ll take a bit of work in the fall, but it’ll all be worth it. You’ll be able to enjoy having more beautiful daylilies in your yard and you can continue to do this each fall moving forward.
Growing up with a mom who filled her home (inside and out) with all sorts of plants, Lisa got her start in gardening at a young age. Living now on her own with a home and yard full of plants (including an indoor greenhouse), she shares all the gardening tips she’s gained over the years.
Robin
Wednesday 7th of December 2022
I received some dollies that need to be planted. But the ground is frozen, how do I keep them alive until spring?