It is really not a great time, but I've done it before by digging a big clump of dirt with the daylily & keep it all together. If you are careful, the daylily will never know anything happened.

Christine, I do it always. Sometimes I reset them ( without dirt ) and they do fine. The thing to remember is to give them plenty of water and keep them watered for 2 or 3 weeks. I also trim mine back when transplanting...Ellie

I agree with ngraham: if you keep the soil around the roots, the plant probably won't notice you've moved it. There's a daylily/hosta place here that sells field-grown clumps of daylilies on site. No mail order. They had their first open house weekend last week, and they're open through the summer. You walk the field, point out the blooming daylilies you want, and they dig up an entire clump right then and there and cram the whole shebang - roots surrounded by their large clump of soil - in a bag. Last summer, I brought home a charming seedling, but I never got around to potting it up. (Please envision - yet again - another red face LOL.) This summer? The plant's a mass of scapes, with blooms everywhere, all coming out of the same plastic bag!

Great! Thanks so much. I just realized this morning that I have a daylily that is sort of under the branches of a bush that grew much larger than last year. The scapes are stretching to the light so I really want to get them out from under there.

Christine

I got a clump of Wyatt's Cameo from my mom's daylily farm a few weeks ago, in full early scapes. Like they said already, she digs leaving an intact rootball, and puts them in grocery bags. It was 6-8 fans with a ball about 8 inches.

I planted it, untrimmed, in a couple of hours, and watered it three days in a row. It never even dropped a bud.

By the way, I just love Wyatt's Cameo. I pulled weeds for two hours to 'earn it'. You know how some daylilies just 'hit the spot'?