Deadhead your Daylilies to Make More Blooms

August 3rd, 2007

A daylily seedpod.For me, July is prime daylily month, and July is now over. That means it is deadheading time.

Truth be told I deadhead constantly as I wander around the garden but this post is meant to remind others to do it, not myself.

You see, many popular daylily varieties, possibly ones in your garden right now, are rebloomers. If their scapes (those are the flower stalks) die back then they will send up new ones. However, if they do not die back, because of a seedpod for instance, no more flowers for you!

Additionally, you’re letting the plant put energy into seeds you probably do not want instead of working to get bigger.

So, when you see these hard little green pumpkins on your daylilies, pick them off. You may just get more blooms. Specifically for all the millions of gardeners who grow Stella de’Oro daylilies, if you don’t remove the seedpods you won’t get more blooms this year.

Now, if you truly wanted the seeds you could keep the pods on and harvest the seeds when the pods split open. However daylilies are hybrids, which means their seeds will not be identical to the parent, but rather an entirely new plant, a plant that might be better than the parent, but most often isn’t nearly as good. So most people don’t want to save their seeds.

Posted in: Gardening, Troubleshooting » 

5 Responses to “Deadhead your Daylilies to Make More Blooms”

  1. Lewis  Says:
    August 15th, 2007 at 8:57 am

    I agree completely…deadhead daylillies. This year, mine didn’t start to bloom until mid-late July. Everything seems to be about a month behind the norm this year. Strange…I suspect it was because of the cooler than norm temps. we had in May/June (I live in lower Michigan)

  2. Kate  Says:
    February 20th, 2008 at 11:14 am

    I say deadhead everything ! It promotes quicker flowering.

  3. Administrator  Says:
    June 20th, 2009 at 2:33 pm

    The scape (the stem holding the old spent flowers or seed pods) can be removed if there are no longer any flower blossoms on it. Often you’ll have flower blossoms on it concurrently with seed pods though so you wouldn’t want to remove it yet.

  4. davehertle  Says:
    July 16th, 2011 at 7:06 am

    I am still new to the game. Planted a few daylilies I bought at Lowes three years ago, and was pleased as to how well they did.

    Puchased some on line two years ago, and they came last spring. The fans were big and bold last year, but only this year did they send up scapes.

    Then it was a joy to behold the beautiful yellows, reds, oranges and burgundy colors. Then I noticed they were slowing down. After reading this post, I went out and knocked off about 50-60 seed pods.

    I think right now, I am more interested in having these plants continue to bloom and grow. I would rather divide with a shovel in the spring, then try to start new plants from seeds.

  5. Peggy Clark  Says:
    June 1st, 2012 at 4:31 pm

    After all the blooms are off the stem, do I cut the stem off at the base of the plant?

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