Lilies: Lilies and frost danger?, 1 by beaker_ch

beaker_ch wrote:
Right now I'm stuggling with the decision to start cleaning up the beds or not. The 10 day forecast has the lows below freezing or just hovering thereabouts until next Thursday. I may wait another week, but I sure am anxious to get out there.

Do you think if I put something like that up in the fall it would prevent plants waking up as early as they do on that side of the house? That's the one thing I hate about that side garden. I have a lot of orientals and more tenders over on that side and I think they bloom too early in relationship with my other lilies. I would like to do something about delaying those a bit. The lilies I have on the north side of my garage bloom later than the ones out in the general garden and, to be truthful, I like those later blooms as it extends the asiatic and LA bloom times.

Let's face it, I just hate it when the lilies are all done blooming. It depresses me. I wish I could find some plants that are big August/September bloomers that I could love as much as the lilies, but so far, nothing has really caugt my fancy. I was thinking of holding some bulbs for a month or so and then plant them in pots for a later bloom season. Does anyone have any good infomation about the time it takes from spring planting to bloom on the various types? I should start keeping better records. The Shirleys I put in pots in May last year, bloomed on July 7th. So the asiatics must be about 60 days. If I waited until mid June on an Asiatic, do you think that's enough time for them to soak up enough sunshine for the next year?