Daylily Nut Farm -- The Back 40
Never know what you'll find back here! This is where I dump all the stuff I don't know where to put.
Charlotte Chamitoff worked persistently to encourage me to write a biographical summary for the Hybridizer's Corner page of her amazing and indispensable web site. I've taken a stab at it here, and (perish the thought!) I may some day elaborate in a tediously full-blown autobiography which I will put on a separate page.
"I love a tree more than a man" -- Ludwig van Beethoven
This is my tree. I planted it as a newly sprouted seedling in 1958 and it has now reached a diameter of more than three feet. The picture gives you a glimpse of the idyllic setting in which I grew up. How could one not come to love nature and growing things in such a setting?!?!
I was born in Madison, Wisconsin in 1948. My Dad maintained a robust vegetable garden in the backyard of our rented house in Sauk City, WI where he lived while completing school at the U. of Wisc. A view of that garden from the back porch of our house is the very first memory that remains in my brain.
When Dad graduated and chose a job from offers locally and on both coasts, we moved from Wisconsin to Wilmington, Delaware. That was the summer of 1951. We had an apartment for a year or two, then a rented a house in a now upscale part of the city. Back then it was merely an ordinary lower middle class neighborhood. We stayed there until I completed fourth grade. During those years, my father maintained a rented garden plot several blocks away because the backyard of our house was not available, either it was too shady, or the landlord wouldn't permit my father to dig up the grass. But during those years, my fascination with trees began. I remember monitoring how a strand of barbed wire nailed to a sapling was swallowed up by the tree's tissues as it grew. I remember delighting over volunteer 'atropurpureum' Japanese maple seedlings that would sprout along the fence line, seeded from a tree in the neighborhood.
Finally we moved to the country in August 1957. My parents bought 6+ acres which was entirely surrounded by extensive woods and farmland, and through which flowed White Clay Creek (now one of the few designated Wild and Scenic Rivers in the mid-Atlantic). I planted my tree the following spring in the meadow (previously a cow pasture) within 50 feet of White Clay creek. The soil in that meadow is fantastic. My Dad was in his glory, maintaining a huge garden each year, and ordering tree seedlings from Musser's Nursery to landscape other parts of the open meadow. I still order trees from Musser's. In those early years, I did much of the work of planting those trees (when I wasn't roaming the expansive woods and fields and absolutely basking in the glory of nature). Around that meadow today you will find huge mature Norway Maples, Norway Spruces, Colorado Blue Spruces, American Arbor Vitae, and Canadian Hemlock, all bought as tiny seedlings from Musser's.
On the banks of White Clay Creek, just down from our favorite swimming hole, grew a big clump of Hemerocallis fulva 'Europa'. One of my summer projects was to dig up many dozens of fans from this clump and plant a hillside daylily planting up near the house. That hillside of daylilies still grows, and has, of course, expanded. This was my introduction to daylilies, and I never forgot it.
Time brings an end to all things. It was with sadness that our family said good-bye to my childhood home. My parents, both having passed 80, sold it in the fall of 2004. The new owners have expanded the original house four-fold and turned it into a multi-million dollar mansion in a French medieval fortress motif with elements imported directly from France (The architect's bill alone was $50,000!) Fortunately the new owners are very down-to-earth people; and we have an open invitation to visit at any time. Meanwhile my parents moved to an absolutely delightful independent living retirement community. There they have a small foundation garden which will hold some of my daylily introductions and I've instructed them to share H. 'Share Me' with their neighbors!
But I digress ...
Leaping to 1986, I found myself newly married and living in a townhouse in Columbia, Maryland with a postage stamp yard, and wanting to continue to enjoy some gardening. I brought some H. fulva Europa' to plant in the front. And of course, I planted some small trees. But there was little room for trees, and I was beginning to hear rumors that there was more to daylilies than just 'Europa'. Parks seed catalog offered daylily seeds, so I ordered some and planted them according to instruction, and they sprouted! I went to a local nursery and bought H. 'Stella de Oro', H. 'Mary Todd' and an unregistered Viette tetraploid sold under the name of "Baltic Amber". I kept these all growing in pots on our back balcony.
With the success of sprouting the Parks' daylily seeds in the spring of 1988, I made my first daylily crosses using the three plants purchased from the nursery. I made a carefully planned and deliberate self of H. 'Stella de Oro' (OK, stop laughing!) and I pollenated H. 'Mary Todd' with the red tet. (At the time I did not know about daylily ploidy).
Then came the real breakthrough. I heard about a daylily flower show in the summer of 1989. The Free State Daylily Society was having an informal daylily display at the Cylburn Arboretum outside of Baltimore. I went. I met Libby Hildt who I believe was the club president at the time, and learned about the AHS and how to join. I marvelled at the diversity of the flowers on display, and I talked for a few minutes with a gentleman whose name I never got, but who was infectiously enthusiastic about his hybridizing, and eager to share his knowledge.
I joined AHS immediately, attended both the FSDS and NCDC fall auctions and plant sales and bought a few dozen daylilies. I supplemented those with purchases from local daylily growers/retailers Sue Bloodgood and Florence Sacker.
That summer we moved from the townhouse to an acre of ground 10 minutes to the west. I started a horseshoe-shaped daylily bed with perhaps 40 cultivars, and the following summer, 1990, I cemented my primary hybridizing goal -- getting the yellow base color out -- and started doing serious hybridizing.
Beyond being a daylily nut, I have dabbled in a number of other avocations and hobbies. I was an amateur bicycle racer, dabbler in photograpy and writing a novel (unfinished), and successful genealogical researcher (self-published a 200 page book of family genealogy).
I have built two houses with my own bare hands and without help. The first of those was built on a mountain ridge in Colorado. While buiding that, (in my spare time), I lived in an 8x16 tar paper shack built at a cost of $75 (to which I added a greenhouse made from glass remnants retrieved from a dumpster behind a glass company). For the first year there, I had no electricity. I never got running water during the four years that I lived in "the shack":
As you can tell from the above, the choice of the term "daylily nut" is pretty appropriate. < grin >
(Click to see the old geezer today.)
Hybridizing for prominent white midribs
An important note regarding the behaviour of squirrels
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Pete Wetzel
P.O. Box 21
Eldersburg, MD 21784
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