A Dozen Trouble-proof Lilies

About 10 years ago, I started with a half dozen varieties of lilies simply because I liked them. Fortunately, and by accident, that half dozen were in the trouble-proof class, and I met no difficulties until I was well grounded in lily culture.

My original six varieties have grown until now. I have about 20,000 lilies. From June 1 to September 30, they make a veritable lily show. This all came about when I discovered how easily they could be multiplied by seeds, offsets, scales, and bulbils. 

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Most lilies will grow in any kind of soil that will grow good crops — sandy loam, loam, or clay — providing they have good drainage. However, if your [garden lies low and you cannot drain it, lily-growing is not for you. 

I learned this fact the hard way, and it is so important that at the risk of repetition, I tell how I learned it.

I had some 20 varieties of lilies that I used in the landscape layout of an industrial plant, and they performed to perfection. 

At the time, I grew the same varieties at my home, about 1,000′ feet away from the factory, and I had nothing but trouble. 

I planted good bulbs at the factory, which would progress, increase and flourish. Then, when I dug them up, I would find clean, white, solid bulbs 3″ to 5″ inches in diameter. 

Evidence Of Poor Drainage

At my home, I also planted good bulbs and would watch them bloom well for the first season and then go backward for the next three years until they disappeared. Then, when I dug them up, I would find bulbs smaller, brown, and pitted. 

Often they would fall apart in my hands. Then I studied the conditions each planted and found the answer. 

The lilies at the factory had been planted between flowering dogwoods, and I had installed a tile for the dogwood, and the lilies were planted on top of this tile. Drainage was, therefore, perfect. 

At home, I relied on a 10% to 15% natural slope to the ground for drainage, which was not enough. So I did two things to correct the lack of drainage. 

First, a tile line was installed. Then, leaves were spayed in as deep as I could get them — 12″ to 18″ inches deep. This treatment corrected the situation, and now I can grow as good lilies at home as at the factory. 

Orthodox Method

Before writing this article, I counted the number of lilies I had at home and found there were 705. One-third are standard varieties, and the other two-thirds are my crosses held for observation. 

Since I am a five-and-ten gardener (five minutes now and ten minutes then), it would be impossible to care for them if I followed orthodox methods. The one thing that has helped me the most is that I do all my cultivating in the winter. 

Before I hit on this method, the summer cultivation to keep down weeds had me licked. After I had hoed out one row, I’d looked at the row I had cleaned out the previous week, and it was ready for another hoeing. 

One of those cases where you can’t win, but I did win by breaking away from standard methods.

Now, when I clean up the garden in November, I put on a 2-inch mulch of sawdust, and my worries about summer cultivation are at an end. The lilies come up through the sawdust, and weeds stay down.

When I started this plan, it was with fear and trembling because of the dire predictions that were said to follow the use of sawdust. 

But three times a year, in winter, spring, and mid-summer, I apply a complete fertilizer, and after four years of trial, I can see nothing but beneficial results from the plan. 

It certainly is a relief not to have an eternal cultivating job staring one in the face. I have time to enjoy the lilies now. Note that I use sawdust as a top mulch only. 

After three or four years, if I want to change a plot, the bulbs are dug, and the sawdust mulch is dug under together with another fertilizer application, the sawdust. However, when put on, new is then weathered and adds humus to the ground, further improving the drainage. 

Four Methods Of Planting

Buy flowering-size, dormant bulbs from a reliable dealer. These may be planted in the autumn from August to December or at any time the ground is not too frozen to dig. 

American-grown bulbs are considered superior to foreign bulbs because they do not have to be shipped as far or remain out of the ground as long. 

Reliable American dealers often can get bulbs to you within a week after they are dug, whereas foreign-grown bulbs may have been out of the ground for three months. 

Very few lilies are successfully planted in the spring unless they are obtained in pots in which they were planted the preceding fall. 

Incidentally, your potted Easter lily, if of the Croft variety, can be planted in the garden after blooming, and it will bloom again for you the same year in August. However, the Bermuda Easter lily is not hardy in northern climates. 

Time To Place Orders 

Place your order in June or July or at least early August. All reliable dealers will deliver the bulbs during the proper planting season. 

When bulbs arrive, inspect them to see if they are sound and clean, especially the basal plate where the roots form. Plant as soon after arrival as possible — within three days or sooner. 

If planting in the perennial garden, select a well-drained location in full sun or dappled shade. Dig a hole three times deeper than the height of the bulb. 

Put in a layer of sand to the depth of the bulb. Dust the bulb’s basal plate with a good fungicide to prevent basal rot (I use Formate) and set the bulb on the sand. 

Cover with garden soil to garden level. Then put on your sawdust (peat moss) mulch and sprinkle a handful of a complete fertilizer on top of the sawdust.

Without going into technicalities, this places the top of the bulb one depth below the surface of the garden soil. I have seen recommendations to plant 12″ to 18″ inches deep, which is unnecessary and detrimental. 

Planting In Rows

When planting lilies in the perennial garden, I like to plant in groups of from three to five to seven, spacing the bulbs from 6″ to 12″ inches apart.

When planting in rows, as I do, I hoe out a trench, the hoe’s width, and the proper depth. Then, put in the sand or leaf mold, and set the bulbs in. 

If the bulbs are especially fancy, rare, or some new variety I want to preserve, I cover the bulbs with pure leaf mold and then use sawdust mulch. 

If the bulbs are standard varieties, I cover them with garden soil and sawdust mulch with fertilizer on top and label all of them. 

Easy Germinating Lilies

Most varieties of lilies grow easily from seed, and most seedlings will bloom the second year from seed, with all performing the third year. 

There are two groups of lilies regarding seeding — an easy and a hard group. 

Among the easy kinds are the following: 

• Lilium regale
• L. henryi
• L. centifolium
• L. pumilum
• L. umbellatum
• Green Mountain Hybrids
• L. sargentiae
• L. dauricum
• L. d. wibani
• L. concolor
• Preston Hybrids
• Maxwill
• L. princeps
• L. davidii
• L. maximowiczii
• L. formosanum

I counted the seeds in one pod of L. regale and found 730 seeds. When planted, I got at least 90 percent germination. This will give you an idea of what is possible. 

Planting The Seeds Of Easy Germinating Lilies

The seed of these easy-germinating lilies can be planted in various ways. Some methods I have tried and found successful are as follows: 

(1) Sow in rows in a cold frame and cover the seed with a half inch of sand. 

(2) The same procedure may be used in flats or pots. I use Plant Bands in flats, which makes it possible to transplant the lilies to the garden at any time of the year when the frost is out of the ground. It is easy to remove the band without breaking the ball of soil. 

Then space the soil balls 6” to 12” inches apart. I transplanted thousands of lilies in mild weather in January. 

(3) I have also sown lily seed directly in the garden row in November, covering the seed with one-half inch of soil. It germinates as fast as grass in April or May.

(4) Seed can be planted in the garden from March to August, and it will germinate in about three weeks. Watch out that you do not mistake the seedlings for grass and pull them up for weeds. A lily seedling leaf and a grass leaf look so much alike that it is easy to make this error. 

Hard-To-Germinate Lilies

The second group may be called the hard-to-germinate group. These require two years before they even show top growth, and then they usually require two to four years of additional growth before blooming. 

Among this group are the following:

• Lilium speciosum
• L. auratum
• L. canadense
• L. parryi
• L. humboldtii
• L. magnificum
• L. martagon
• L. japonicum

I advise leaving this group alone until you have gained experience by growing the easy-germinating kinds. 

Third Method

A third method of increasing lilies is from the scales of the bulbs. Break off six or a dozen scales, depending on the size of the bulb, and plant these scales in a pot, flat, or garden row. 

I usually plant them shallow enough to expose their tips, then cover them with sawdust mulch to keep the weeds down. 

In about 30 to 60 days, bulblets will be formed on the base of the scales, and leaflets will appear. In two years, you usually have a blooming size bulb. 

Fourth Method

The fourth method of increase is from bulblets and/or bulbils. Many varieties of lilies form small bulblets under the ground’s surface at the base of the lily stem. This growth tends to form clumps of lilies. 

After several years, when the clump gets too crowded, they can be dug up from August to December, and the bulb masses broke apart and replanted. 

Never try to do this in the spring. In the fall, the bulbs are dormant, and the job can be done easily and without harm to the bulblets or bulbs. 

Some lilies such as L. tigrinum and L. sargentiae, form bulbils in the axils of the leaves. These can be taken off in August and treated as a seed, although they are miniature bulbs. 

Plant them from one-half to an inch deep, and most of them will produce flowers in the second year. 

Fifth Method

There is a fifth method of lily increase, the method from which I get my greatest pleasure — hybridizing or cross-pollination. This is the process usually depended upon to secure new colors and varieties of lilies. 

In 1947, I took the pollen of L. dauricum wilsoni, a light, upward-facing yellow, and placed it on the pistil of an Edna Kean lily, an outward-facing red hybrid created by Isabella Preston, and labeled the cross. 

When the pod was ripe or ready to split open, I harvested the seed and planted it in a flat, placing the flat in a cold frame over winter.

In the Spring of 1948

I transplanted the seedlings (150 to 200) into a row in the garden. Then, in 1949, they bloomed for the first time. It was a definite cross as one could see all variations of the two parents — pastel orange and yellow with outward-facing flowers, red shades, and orange upward-facing flowers. 

I made 18 selections from this cross in the fall of 1949, planting them in rows 24″ inches apart. Then, in 1950, I watched the rows disappear in a jungle of lily stems. 

These hybrids spread by underground stems until three rows, two feet apart, had become one mass of lily stems 10′ feet across. Every 6″ inch bulblet formed, which helped to further mix up the 18 selections.

To me, it was discouraging because I like a plant that stays where I put it. So I figured this tendency to spread was a deficiency until Arnold Davis, Director of the Cleveland Garden Center, looked at them and said, “Carl, you don’t know an asset when you see it. 

People like a lily that will spread and colonize the garden.” And I thought he was right. 

In The Fall of 1951

In this group, one outstanding orange, outward-facing specimen stood 48″ inches tall with 39 blooms. 

In the fall of 1951, while Gen. Eisenhower was still in France with no thought of the Presidency in mind; I wrote to Mrs. Eisenhower for permission to name this lily in her honor, to which she graciously acceded. Thus, I named my first new lily.

After securing her permission, I named the second selection a red, outward-facing lily for Mrs. Robert Nixon. The balance of the cross I named “The Colonizer” strain because of the asset Arnold Davis had pointed out.

The above cross was open pollination. That is, I made no effort to protect the pistil. It was simply good fortune that I got a successful cross because the same year, I made about 100 other crosses and grew them on for three years only to find out I had the original parent variety.

Dr. Sam Emsweller of the U. S. Experiment Station at Beltsville, Md., showed me how to do closed pollination by simply slipping a four-inch soda straw over the pistil after putting on the pollen, then bending the exposed end of the soda straw over to close it from all entry of insects or wind. 

All of my pollinating, since has been closed pollination, and that little device has saved me a tremendous amount of space and time.

Start Lily Growing

If you make your start in lily-growing with selections from the following list of species and varieties, you will secure maximum success with the minimum of trouble. 

After you have tried the twelve easy kinds of lilies mentioned above, you will have acquired enough experience and confidence to delve into the more difficult ones, such as L. auratum, L. martagon, L. humboldtii, L. magnificum, L. japonicum, and others. 

The U. S. D. A. Experiment Station at Beltsville, Md., under the direction of Dr. Sam Emsweller, has put out several excellent hybrids. 

I have tested these and especially commend Beltsville Nos. 6,7, and 8 as being in the trouble-proof class. 

They are respectively red, yellow, and orange, outward-facing, and average about 30 inches high. 

No mention of new lily hybrids would be complete without including the work of Jan de Graaff, of Gresham, Oregon. 

Among the trouble-proof hybrids I have tested, I consider the following worthy of special mention. 

44659 by Carl Grant Wilson