Hi Phylrae,

Let's list the gardening "boo-boo's"
1) Spring planting is a little dicier than fall planting - the earlier you plant in spring the better.
2) Probably the bulbs you bought were "not ready for prime time". I.e., too small and possibly not stored well (or for too long) before sale. Small "young" bulbs produce small stems with few blooms. Having 3 out of 5 bulbs not come up indicates a "stressed" bulb. Some lilies like Martagon don't care for transplanting and "stress" easily, and often don't come up the first (and sometimes even second) year. But for this to happen with Orienpets indicates poor bulb treatment/late sale on Jackson & Perkins part (assuming you didn't leave them laying around for a month or more before planting).
3) Then it appears Botrytis got to them, meaning their size may have diminished further (since they weren't fed by photosynthesis over the summer).

Heck you've almost done as much harm to them as I've done to some of mine! :)

I bought small dried up Home Depot bulbs one spring and promptly forgot them in a back (hot) store room until mid-July! They didn't come up AT ALL their first season (and only a few the second season), but are now big beautiful lilies.

So, be optimistic! It's really hard to kill hybrid lilies by basic poor treatment, (viruses and bulb rot is a different story). Even a small bulb has a large store of energy, so as long as you still have a bulb, and well-drained soil should prevent bulb rot, you should get some lilies next year. They may be small, and you'll want to be sure that Botrytis doesn't weaken them a second year in a row, but they shouldn't be goners.

If your soil is good, feeding isn't really necessary (though rose fungal spray to prevent botrytis will be), time to grow is mostly what they need.

Good luck!
-Helen

Thank you so much for helping me Helen, and for your encouragement. One thing I WILL ask my husband to do with me differently next year is to proactively spray for botrytis...he is the one who sprays the roses to prevent blackspot. BTW, if you see this and know, will spray for roses also prevent fungus on lilies? Or does it depend on which spray is used? We DON'T spray for insects. Thanks. Phyl

I lost many of my lilies to rot one year when I didn't check for soil moisture before irrigating, and ended up irrigating too frequently. The beds are very well drained, so there was no standing water, but constantly-wet is still too wet. That could be a part of your problem, too, especially if the soil is very rich. Don't get me wrong, they don't like drought or poor soil, but I've found that both water and food can be overdone. Whether the bulb rot was botrytis or some other entity, I don't know, but I'm sure they were too wet. I haven't made that mistake again, have NOT treated for botrytis or anything else, and have not lost any more bulbs. My climate is drier than yours, though, so plants are naturally prone to less disease. I don't spray anything and have very little disease (that's one of the very few virtues of this climate).

When you buy lily bulbs, be sure the bulbs are solid, not papery or shriveled in any way. None of the outside scales should be wilted or dry. They should have viable roots attached. Lily bulbs never go completely dormant, so any time they spend out of the ground is hurting them. They are using up their water and food stores just surviving. That's why they do better when planted in fall - most companies dig in the fall, so bulbs sold in spring have been in storage a long time. The best bulb companies store their lily bulbs in a moisture- and temperature-controlled (quite cold, around freezing) environment, so the lilies are lulled into an almost-dormant state and handle storage well. Lesser companies just store them in warehouses or wherever, so the bulbs become dry and/or rot and/or sprout too soon. Late season clearance sales are a risk, since you already know those bulbs have been stored a long time. Whenever I receive a lily shipment, I examine the bulbs right away. If they are papery, feel too light, have any shriveled scales, are rotted or sprouted, I'm on the phone to that company right away and work out how they want to fix the situation from there, since they sent me unacceptably poor bulbs. Similarly, when buying lily bulbs in stores, check the bulbs for solidity,weight, and roots. None of the scales on the outside of the bulb should be wilted or dry.

This is not a criticism of J&P (haven't ordered lilies from them in 8 years), just advice on how to pick out good bulbs and know when you have a bad shipment. And not to water TOO much, but where you are, you can't help it if you get too much rain. I suspect the plants that turned brown promptly have rotted bulbs that won't come up again, ever, but the only way to know that for sure is to dig them up, which is yet another stress for struggling plants, if they are alive. If you can wait a year to see if they survived, be patient.

Jeanne

Hi again phylrae,

This is my first year to get Botrytis on some lilies so I don't have direct experience with sprays. (I will come this spring!) But, I read somewhere that rose fungus spray works fine. If you've already got roses and a hubby doing the spraying I'd go with that.

Hi Jeanne,

Your advice about not overwatering and overfeeding is well taken. I think ilies are more often killed by too much attention than to little.
Thankfully, botrytis is different from bulb rot, since once your bulb rots the plant really is a goner. Botrytis lives in the soil and if it gets sprayed up onto the plants kills the leaves and stems. There's no direct damage to the bulb but the bulbs is weakened because it no longer has leaves to feed it.

Your bulb buying tips are well taken also, there's a reason there are wide ranges in pricing for lily bulbs. Both the expensive and inexpensive have their +/-'s.

-Helen

Thanks, Jeanne & Helen, for the info. I have clipped your replies and saved them! Phyl