Choosing, planting and caring for your garden lilies

Choosing, Planting And Caring For Your Garden Lilies

Lilies give life and color to any garden and brighten it up beyond your expectations. These hardy bulbs need very little care but can surprise anyone by eventually growing into a large cluster of flowering stems.

To have a longer-lasting series of blooms, you can choose a combination of early, mid-season and late-blooming cultivars. This way, you can have flowering lilies for months on end.

Asiatic

The two most popular types of lily plants for your garden are the Asiatic and Oriental lilies. The Asiatic variety is the easiest to grow.

It is hardy and there is no need for staking. It is also not very choosy when it comes to the soil it grows as long as it has good drainage.

Orientals

Oriental lilies, on the other hand, are getting to be popular. Credit this to their large, exotic blooms with their heady sweet scents. Orientals can be successfully grown if the soil is organic and acidic, with good drainage as well, and heavily mulched each fall.

One should always consider the plant height and bloom season when choosing them for cultivating. For those not very familiar with each individual plants characteristics, try to visit them in public gardens during bloom time to see them in their full glory.

Planting

Lily bulbs may be planted in spring or fall. If there are hardy plants in containers, include them in your garden.

Choose only firm and plump bulbs with roots in them. Bulbs dont go completely dormant and have to be planted before they dry out.

Full sunlight

Both the Asiatic and Oriental lilies are best planted where there is full sunlight. In reduced sunlight, they grow taller and spindly not very good looking. Martagon hybrids, however, can bloom well in the shade, which makes them prized by some growers.

For some effects, you can plant your lilies in groups of three or five identical bulbs. Space the plants 8 to 12 inches apart.

Depending on the vigor and size of the lilies, keep the groups 3 to 5 feet apart. Small lily bulbs are planted 2 to 4 inches deep, and the larger bulbs about 4 to 6 inches deep.

Soil

Your garden soil for your lilies should drain well. Mix in lots of organic matter to the clay soil to have a raised area with improved drainage.

Finally, add this organic matter into light and sandy soil. This will help hold on to nutrients and prevents fast drying. It is also safe to apply winter mulch. Wait until the ground begins to freeze before spreading it.

Plant food

Leave the mulch in spring until the danger of hard frost is over. Fertilize the soil with a phosphorus formula like the 5-10-10.

Follow the instructions to the letter in fertilizer application. Slow-release fertilizers work very well with lilies.

Pests

Lilies have few enemies, but aphids and botrytis blight (a fungal disease) can cause problems on the buds and leaves, respectively.

Spray the aphids off your plants with strong water jets. Water your plants early in the day and provide adequate space between plants for good air circulation, thus preventing fungal disease.

Choosing, planting and caring for your lilies are not that exacting or that rigid in exchange for all that beauty and fragrance of their flowers.

 

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Choosing lilies

Choosing Lilies

If you want to grow a plant that is easy to maintain, beautiful and colorful then lilies are the best option for you.

Studies show that lilies are considered as one of the most popular flowers in the world along with rose. In fact, it is the fourth most popular flower across the globe. Like other flowers, lilies come in different types, shapes, colors and sizes.

Commonly, they are used as borders or beds of other plants such as shrubs. Other varieties are perfect as accent plants while others are ideal for pool planting. The small ones are used by people in their alpine rock gardens or as indoor potted plants.

In landscapes, lilies can be combined with other early, mid-season, and late-blooming cultivars since its flowers usually bloom around middle of June until middle of September.

Finding true lilies

For starters, it can be confusing to find lilies if they only rely on the name lily. This is because there are so many plants that bear the word lily as part of their common name but they are not really lilies. Some of these plants are daylily and peace lily which do not belong to the genus lilium.

In finding true lilies, it is best to check their characteristics such as having stiff stems with narrow strap; large flowers that develop at the tip of the stem; either trumpet, bowl or bell shaped that come with petals that are reflexed. You will also know that the plant in front of you is a true lily if it nods downwards, faces outwards, or turns upwards.

After confirming that what you have is a true lily, you may proceed with the kinds or types to find out which is the most suitable one for you. The most commonnot to mention most populartypes are the Asiatic and Oriental lilies.

If you need the type that is easiest to grow and doesnt need too much maintenance since they can grow with any type of soil that drains well, opt of for Asiatic lilies. But if you are very particular about size, fragrance and color, choose Oriental lilies because these have exotic and large as well as sweet perfume. Experts say that these two are ideal for northern gardens.

No matter what type of lilies you choose, make sure that you choose the ideal soil and containers where you will place it. Clay and sand are the best soil options out there. Because of its high retention properties, clay is preferred by first time gardeners of ornamental plants such as lilies.

When it comes to containers, lilies will grow best in those have tapered bottom and sides that will enable air and water to circulate properly.

Experts say most lilies are best grown outdoors because these need full sunlight for them to bloom perfectly. It is ideal for lilies to be exposed in sunlight at least 10 hours for them to grow taller and with larger foliage. However, if you want to keep lilies indoors, make sure that you choose smaller types and they have enough light to avoid them from being floppy.

 

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