‘Conca d’ Or’ Lily Bulbs – Garden Review

Planted next to finch feeders and photographed in our display garden for their March 2003 issue, Sunset Magazine featured ‘Conca d’ Or’ for its garden worthiness.  Then as well as now, it has proven to be an outstanding lily and has spread its way around the world for long-lasting flowers and impressive stature. 

Fragrance in Gardens, Good Scents & Bad

We received an email the other day from a customer who buys from us at the Northwest Flower & Garden Show in Seattle each February.  She wrote, 

"I have had stupendous success with the bulbs I purchased from you at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show and would like to plant more!  (The fragrance I smell while working in my garden almost makes pulling weeds enjoyable.)" [Thank you Jan]

I do believe that people who garden are more in tune with all their senses.  We love pleasing color combinations, the whiff of a delightfully scented plant, the crackle of autumn leaves underfoot - or the crunch of a newly graveled path -  ripe berries, juicy and warm from the sun and what gardener can't resist touching foliage or flowers?  I drive my husband, Bob, crazy in fabric or clothing stores because I need to feel all the textures - he thinks I'm nuts, but oh well.  After many years of marriage either he has adjusted or I've "trained" him (smile) because he simply rolls his eyes nowadays and takes care to point out, "You missed one."

LATE blooming lily bulbs, 3 new hybrids

Many professional lily hybridizers in the past 2 decades have focused only on lily bulbs that bloomed early and were of a standard height for the cut flower market.  Lilies that bloomed late were ignored or discarded. As a result the gene pool has suffered from the lack of wide diversity that is important for creating unique varieties for the home garden.  (Varieties are shown above from left to right.) 'Goldfinch', 'Las Cerezas' (The Cherries) and 'Katydid' all bloom late, plus are tall - suitable as an accent plant in your garden. 

Bob recently visited hybridizer, Len Sherwin, in his home state of Wyoming to get a first hard look at the labor of love that Len has imparted for over 35 years to his garden lily selections.  Len worked a shipping season with B&D lilies 20 years ago, so our ties run back for many years.

Growing Lily bulb “babies” in recycled mulch. (updated 8.23.11)**

Discard pile outside packing room

Peat moss and shavings from stored bulbs is piled outside the packing rooms, ready to use as summer time mulch to reduce weed germination and to help increase the “organics” in a new flower or vegetable bed.  Scales and broken bulbs, dirt from the packing room floor, discarded paper labels and just about anything else save for plastic and large pieces of wood is in the mixture.  In April, after most of our shipping is finished, this dry "mulch" is spread over top flattened cardboard boxes on areas that Dianna wants to plant that fall or the next spring.

Occasionally (as in the picture here) not all bulbs are removed from a case before dumping them onto the pile - perhaps the bulbs were deemed too small to sell, were mechanically damaged or too few in number to plant back.  When we lived in town, our neighbor would come over to poke through the discards to see what goodies he could find to nurse back to health - and he had a marvelous garden from our leftovers, which made a good photography subject.  

Colors Shifting in Asiatic Lilies?

Lily petals are composed of several layers of color cells.  As the sun "bleaches" out the topmost cells, the color just below is revealed.  This is the reason why your blossoms might look slightly different daily or even vary somewhat from year to year.  Blossom color is influenced on how intense the sun might be during flowering.  This is especially evident with lighter pink Asiatic or Oriental lilies that could appear nearly white when opening during very hot weather.  In full hot sun the flower buds can be lighter than normal but the same cultivar in a shady area could be darker in color, even during the same summer.

Batty bats at 1:15AM

We were sound asleep when the “intruder” alarm suddenly went off this morning – jolted awake by the high pitched siren outside our bedroom wall; strobe light on the house for emergency personnel to locate us quickly, plus the subsequent phone call from the monitoring company.

 

The security system agent was asking whether to dispatch the authorities, but we soon realized that it wasn’t a motion detector in the house that triggered the alarm but rather our shipping building.  Since the outside lights were now on and there was no exterior evidence of foul play, we suspected an alarm malfunction; Dianna stayed on the line while Bob did a perimeter check.  There have been alarm breakdowns before over the past 10+ years but this was the only time it affected a single structure.

The  72’ long building used for processing orders has Dianna’s art studio and hat storage at one end, the bins and shipping line in the middle and the far end on the right houses box storage, packaging equipment and one of the bulb coolers.  No windows were broken; no doors were open and Bob wondered if an animal was trapped inside because he could hear a slight “scratching sound” at the door near the keypad.  Oh great, is “Edward” the neighbor cat, locked in and panicking?  Or was it something bigger?  In the middle of the night it’s easy to imagine everything from Coyotes, to Cougars to Bears – Oh my!