My experience says cut them back. They will start new leafing. Probably will look good next year. Maybe someone else would have another suggestion. Hope this helps.

Sherry

I usually pot them if they don't look good. It is a good thing to give them a good start. They will eventually put out new growth most likely anyway.
kay

duplicate post, sorry,
kay

This post was edited by organic_kitten on Wed, Jul 23, 14 at 18:40

The foliage should be trimmed.

They will be fine long term, but I would cut the leaves back to maybe about 6 inches or so now.

What do you mean by you "piled up dirt against them"?

If you added more dirt on top of the plants, that may not have been a good thing to do. Daylilies are very sensitive to how deeply their crowns are planted. Their crowns CANNOT be more than 1" below the surface of the dirt (a bit less is better as the plants tend to settle in deeper). The daylilies will survive, yes, BUT you won't get any bloom scapes (which is, after all, the whole point of growing them). Been there, done that with a seedling - which did not bloom with the rest of the cross, until I went rooting around and discovered that it had settled in way too deep.

So please go make sure that your crowns are 1" or less below the surface of the soil.