Fall Is the Time To Plant Lilies

Lilies are among the most beautiful and fragrant flowers in the garden. Here's how and when to plant them.

Advances in over-winter storage of commercial lily bulbs have allowed gardeners to buy and plant lilies in the spring. But autumn is still the best time to get them in the ground.

Deeply planted and well-mulched, lily bulbs planted in fall will take all but the coldest days of the season to establish themselves before taking off in the spring. Fall planting assures bulb preservation and a good, strong start.

Lilies are unique perennials that give us tall, spectacular spring and summer flowers. The remarkable plants hoist striking, sweet-smelling blossoms above the other flowers, annual and otherwise, in our gardens. Careful planting helps guarantee you’ll have colorful, graceful blossoms come next growing season and many seasons thereafter.

Fox Farm® Happy Frog Bulb Food contains extra phosphorus for sustained flowering and potassium to help plants become more disease resistant. Works great on all flowering plants, shrubs and trees. Includes mycorrhizae and humic acid too!

You’ll want to place your lilies where they will receive adequate sunshine. Full sunlight to partial shade is best. But the most important consideration in planting lilies is drainage. Sticking the bulbs in heavy clay soils can make for a lily disaster. Without proper drainage, lilies will be stunted and have less chance of surviving year to year.

Avoid places in your garden where water may collect. Lilies don’t like wet feet. Not only does saturated soil impair their growth, it allows fungus and and the few other diseases that attack them to gain a foothold. Yet lilies need a constant supply of water. Adding plenty of organic material that holds the moisture that roots can draw from is as important as maintaining good drainage.

To improve soil drainage, dig up the patch where lilies will go — they’ll be spaced 8 to 10 inches apart, 15 inches for larger types — and add sphagnum peat moss or coconut coir in an amount equal to 1/3rd the volume of soil dug. Turn up an area large enough to hold as many bulbs as you plan to plant and to accommodate the their multiplication from year-to-year. But make the space no larger than the space you want them to occupy. Planting lilies in raised beds or along walkways and borders helps confine them.

Turning the soil deeply — double digging — will help facilitate good drainage.

Adding perlite or vermiculite to your soil will improve both drainage and aeration, things that help keep bulbs from rot and disease. Mixes of peat, perlite and limestone with other minerals that help lighten heavy soils are a good choice as long as they don’t make existing soils alkaline. Lilies tolerate a range of pH readings depending on their type. Asian lilies do best in slightly acidic soils, 7.0 (neutral) down to 6.0. Oriental lilies are alkaline averse, preferring soils with a pH from 5.5 to 6.5.

Pine needles and certain leaf mulches can help keep soils on the acidic side. All soils should be amended with plenty of compost and organic matter to help keep them from drying out completely. This is especially important with sandy soils.

You can aid moisture drainage by planting you lilies on a slope where gravity helps carry away the excess. In addition to containing their spread, raised beds allow for heaping soil, something that also uses gravity to prevent soggy conditions.

coconut coir

An eco-friendly peat alternative! Made from compressed coconut fiber, Earth Juice ProCoir bricks exhibit a very good balance of wetting and aeration and a resistance to bacteria and fungus growth. Use as a replacement for soil or as a soil conditioner. ProCoir coconut fiber works anywhere you would normally use peat moss, rockwool, vermiculite, perlite or pumice… and worms love it!

ProCoir contains NO nutrients. The easiest thing to do is add organic fertilizer to your nutrient solution before you soak the coconut coir fiber. The resulting material is loaded with nutrients and ready to go.

ProCoir holds 8-9 times its weight in water and has a high nutrient-absorption capacity. These characteristics make it an ideal soil amendment. Great for worm bins too!

Dimensions:

Brick – 7-3/4″ x 4″ x 1-3/4″

Bale – 12-1/2″ x 12-3/4″ x 5-1/4″

Grower’s Tip:

Each ProCoir Brick expands to make 5-7 quarts of growing medium. ProCoir Bales make 10 times as much.

Double Digging

How to Double Dig a Bed

This widely popular technique of bed preparation will ensure healthy roots, beautiful blooms, and a bountiful harvest. Popularized by John Jeavons of Ecology Action in his book “How to Grow More Vegetables than you ever thought possible, on less land than you can imagine”

Double Dig Instructions

1. Dig a trench one shovel-length deep (nine or ten inches) and the length of your planting area.

2. Pile the soil in a wheelbarrow. (ours piled in front of first trench, although wheelbarrow makes it easier to transport to last trench at end of double dig.)

3. Loosen the soil at the bottom of the trench another nine to ten inches. (Spading fork works great for this)

4. Add organic material, such as compost, and any necessary soil amendments. Using a spading fork, thoroughly mix them into the subsoil.

5. Dig a second trench parallel to the first and repeat steps 2 and 3.

6. Use the topsoil from the second trench to fill the first one, adding more organic matter and mixing it in.

7. Repeat the procedure until you’ve dug, enriched and amended the entire planting area.

8. Fill the last trench with the topsoil you put in the wheelbarrow when you dug the first trench, enriching it with organic matter as you did before.

Visit the Grow Biointensive Website for more information and to order John Jeavon’s books at:http://www.growbiointensive.org

perlite or vermiculite