I think one of my biggest mistakes was planting daylilies in front of shrubs that grew too big and robbed the daylilies of water and nutrients.

Mistake #2: Using Miracle Grow Garden soil with its big chunks of wood that compost in hot temps and burn plants to death.

Mistake #3: Buying more plants than garden space and creating a mammoth plant ghetto.

We learn as we grow!

Debra

I started buying them and now I cant seem to stop. Seriously though I think my biggest mistake was babying them too much, they are much tougher than people think.

1) Discovering that they can be cross-pollinated! Life hasn't been the same since.

2) Attempting to cross a dip with a tet (duh!)

3) Relying on my memory instead of writing down the cross when I made it

4) Trying to pull the rest of a spent bloom off the seed pod (oops, there goes the seed pod, too)

5) Wasting time trying to pollinate spiders that have long pistils

6) Interplanting dips with tets - which results in a lot of running back and forth to pollinate

7) Attempting to make crosses when weather is 90 degrees or higher

8) Cutting off a "spent" scape, only to discover too late it had a seed pod attached.

9) Planting daylilies in too much shade

Nancy

Planting too close together.
Yard is small, but I wanted more! Plus, the daylilies are small when you plant them, it seems there's enough room, but..
I like to livehead when I can, and deadhead. How many times in order to remove that spent bloom that happened to be between the new ones or between new buds, I broke them! Now I think, if I can't easily remove it, I leave it :)

Oh ladies. This is turning into 'confessions of a hemaholic' I'm laughing here, but not unkindly. Why are foibles funny? I don't know. Because they are honest, I suppose, and gardeners are afflicted with chronic sincerity.

My biggest mistake, I think, was that I purchased too many, too soon, before I knew anything. I wanted 'landscape plants' and ended up with some good garden plants, but also some 'hybridizer plants', which have been disappointing.

Christine

My biggest mistake was spending lots of cash on Southern Evergreen daylilies and expecting the ultra high budcounts the hybridizers' advertised. Almost all have left my garden: either through trade, sale or death. Now, I won't spend more than $30 on a daylily unless it was hybridized in Zone 6b or colder.

Edward

1. Buy with no place to plant.
2. Plant too close together.
3. Buy because I like it whether it will do really well here or not. (they usually do, though)

4. Plant too close to roses. Roses reach out and grab them.
kay

How fun!! This sort of reads like:"You know you're an addict when:"

Here are just a few of my past gardening mistakes:

1) in the heat of the moment (at an auction) buying the same plant I ALREADY OWNED!! Aaugh!! Have done this more than once.

2) Planting new daylilies too closely together. Don't we all do that at first? They look so small and so far apart.Surely wish I'd done that at first and filled in with annuals the first year or two until they grew into the monstrous 3' across clumps many of them are now! I've now had the garden long enough to know that when you can, space the large ones at least 24-30" center to center ( or 36" if you have ample room- otherwise the less vigorous ones will get crowded out) and the minis at least 18" apart. I've removed nearly 400 plants from the garden but those left have grown so large they've completely filled in. Could remove more!

3) Neglected updating my garden maps : big, big mistake. Last year an SUV ran over the garden out front.... and am having to wait until they bloom to find markers in wrong places.

Thrse are just a few. Ideally, I wish I'd planted underground markers with every daylily but realisitcally, that probably won't happen. That would be a great goal for someone just starting out, however!

oh gee, mistake # 1 was planting them too close together and now I accidently break a bud off some thing, trying to get to the marker to see which one I am taking a picture of, IF I cant remember its name.About half of mine,I remember their name when I look at them.
Mistake # 2, was planting asiatic lilies, too close to one daylily and now its boxed in and not getting much sunlight,as the lilies grew bigger then I expected:)So,I have to figure out which one i am going to move, lily, or daylily.

#1 Falling in love with a daylily from a picture, buying it and finding out it really doesn't bloom like the picture.

#2 Having too much space and just keep adding more garden beds and then realizing I have to weed all those beds.

#3 Starting too many daylily seeds in the winter months indoors and then having no place to plant them outdoors without adding another garden bed. Back to mistake #2.

Julia

Buying my first daylilies from a "garden" source rather than from a "daylily" source.

Thinking that BOGO is a good idea. No! BOGO is getting two of the same plant when I'd rather have two of different plants!

Nate

I think I've made almost every mistake that's been mentioned.

Jean, just today I moved a daylily that was being buried by a lily!

Right now I have a lost daylily because I failed to update my chart when I moved it and last year when I had tree work done the workers managed to drag off quite a few markers with the tree branches so I have to wait til bloom to see if I can ID them. It was a seedling bed that lost most of the markers so I'm afraid I'll have several unknowns.

Buying a daylily just because it was a "bargain".

Buying too many look alikes.

Not marking a cross and then deadheading the spent bloom.

Val

Planting in too much shade - check. (But the garden here has a lot of shade, and some things grew bigger than expected, adding even more shade than expected.)

Buying more plants than I have spaces to put them - check.

Leaving the newly bought plants in the tubs of water for a year or more (because I have no space to put them) resulting in labels fading or fallen off - check.

Asking garden helpers to dig a large clump for me - without standing over them to make sure they didn't chop the roots off in the process - check.

Potting daylilies up in the summer in small (2 gal) black plastic grower pots with lots of compost and time-release fertilizer, then putting said pots into full sun, and watering heavily - check.

Leaving seedlings in the raised beds for way too long (years after their first bloom), then having to wrestle mightily to dig them out - check.

Buying daylilies which don't fit my hybridizing interests and don't have a specific use/space planned for them in the garden, just because (of a pretty face or a club auction or whatever other spur of the moment reason) - check.

Digging out a daylily which wasn't thriving (because of too much shade) and then tossing it out (because it's a color I'm not that invested in, and I didn't think anybody locally would be interested in it) and then changing my mind about it - check. (But fortunately one fan seemed to have escaped the shovel, and I am growing that out now to make sure it is what I think it is.)

Not tagging (actually, paper-clipping) crosses immediately on the spot as they are made, or else paper-clipping but then forgetting to write down the pollen parent/clip color on my list - check.

Buying our current home/property to begin with, thinking I could grow all the daylilies that I wanted to (without taking into account the substantial amount of shade, or knowing about the herds of deer that roam the neighborhood, and which we can't fence out) - CHECKITY CHECK!

As a young gardener, planting the orange ditch lily...I'm still digging it out fifteen years later.

I've made most of the same mistakes.

I buy from hort sales, plant shows but only in the past few years started buying from real growers.

I don't always keep my maps/charts up to date.

When I started out, I bought for the appearance of the daylily, now I do some checking before I buy.

Johnny Jump Ups took over a garden bed on me and swallowed a daylily. I found it when I was yanking out the JJU.

Starting out small and getting carried away and spending all my time weeding.

Once I bought the same plant twice, by mistake. It was Chicago Aapache so it turned out O.K.

I just thought of another mistake and that is allowing the cost of shipping to exert too much control over my selections. This especially applies to the Lily Auction, where I will end up deciding to buy from only one seller to save on shipping. Then I end up not getting exactly the daylilies that I want. A few years down the road the cost of shipping will be long forgotten, but the daylilies live on.
Christine

I've made 'em all and then some. Spacing is my real weakness. I Wander all over with a potted plant in one hand and a trowel in the other and they end up where ever I find a spot clear enough for the time being until more Sumac or briers invade it and I have daylily beds a hundred feet apart in the woods----which is taking over! I plant daylily seeds in the Fall and often either forget to label them or mix up the rows--can't remember if Hyperion X H rosea is the first row or the rosea species crosses. I plant the seeds to close and then fume when they crowd each other--I don't know why I'm surprised when they are crowding each other. Lady at my favorite nursery says maybe the strongest will survive but that doesn't mean the prettiest---about a hundred species crosses should bloom in my back garden beds but I have yet to line them out--I'm just hoping I will see some pinks in that row as they were rosea crosses----but there are deer hoof prints (or the Devil) back there--that's the part of the jungle I call Eden after the Fall, where a tree fell on my attempt at a perennial border.-----------------------------Weedy

Ok, I have ALL of those things. I lost many labels from pots, ( grandchildren) pets, etc. I do labels everything as I pollenate, attach a plactic label to the bloom..

The first year I crossed daylilies, I had so many seeds that I made a garden just for them. So many came up and they were so thick that I culled out every 3rd plant. Obviously, I threw out the best ones. Like I said, I have done all of the above but this was the most stupid one..Ellie