Have you been “hands-deep” in Fall gardening chores like I have? After recently cleaning up our daylilies, I felt like I accomplished so much because of how neat and tidy they looked! Here’s how to prune Stella D’Oro Daylilies!
I’m not sure whether I like our Stella D’Oro Daylilies or not.
One one hand, they look so pretty when in bloom.
But once the major blooming is done…by the time Fall rolls around…man do they look awful!
Here’s a picture of some of our daylilies when they were just about to bloom . . .
The daylilies are nice and bushy, and even the buds have a yellow “hint” of the sunny blossoms to come!
And when that happens, I always love the daylilies!
As I was pruning them a couple of weekends ago, I grabbed my camera because the “before and after” was amazing.
Here’s a wonderful image showing you the freshly pruned and cleaned up Stella D’Oro Daylily on the right, versus it’s sad counterpart up front, on the left . . .
It will only take a few minutes to clean this daylily up.
FTC Disclaimer: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. I explain more here.
How to Prune Stella D’Oro Daylilies
I prune my Stella D’Oro Daylilies twice a year.
- Fall: main pruning and clean-up for the Winter months.
- Spring: secondary clean-up from the Winter, possible (optional) pruning if needed.
First, grab those dead leaves around the outer base of the plant and gently tug — they come right off.
Next, use your fingers as a rake and comb “up” from the center base of the plant to remove the rest of the dead leaves.
Look at this ugly mess I removed from just one plant . . .
Using your favorite pruners — I use these from Fiskars — start trimming the green leaves down.
I hold a bunch with one hand, then cut them with the other. This way, I’m holding the remains that go right into the garden trash, no mess in the garden bed.
When you start to notice some stiff brown stems — stop and pick those out. Most will come up readily, you might need to gently tug on a few of them.
Here are the dead stems from that same plant above . . .
Finally, continue cutting the leaves down to just a few inches tall.
I kept any remaining flowers, just because.
Check out this before-and-after shot . . .
Such a huge difference, and it only takes a few minutes per plant once you get the hang of it.
Doesn’t this section of the garden bed look like it could be early Spring instead of early October? Kind of funny!
I still need to prune back a few more of our Stella D’Oro Daylilies in another bed . . .
Yikes! 🙂
How about you?
Do you love your Stella D’Oro Daylilies?
Or does your affection wax and wane like mine does?
Happy gardening!
~Laura
Thank you very much. The secret to a beautiful garden, always ask the professional.
LOL I agree Charlie! And I don’t consider myself a professional. You will find in many of my gardening posts — or in the comments I respond to — that my best advice is to ask a local nursery professional in your particular area! 🙂
I do love Stella d’oro daylilies for their all summer blooming ability! Not to many perennials will do that. Up here in NW Wisconsin, sure to the harsh Winters, I don’t clean up any perennials until Spring just to give them a little more winter protection. Liz
Good point, Liz! Mine die back completely to the ground, as in you can’t even really see there were — or are — any daylilies there during the Winter months. I’m always amazed they come back each year. LOL I do exactly what you do (with your daylilies) with some of my other plants, to give them more protection. Harsh winters are no fun…especially for our plants. 🙂
We were on vacation very recently and when we returned our Stella’s Had bloomed and now you see Mostly the seed pods. Is there anyway I can now do something to get them to bloom because we still have a lot of summers ago.
Excellent question Donna, and there is hope, so no worries. Remove those seed pods from the plants. I use garden pruners to do this. It will be a pain to do if there are a lot of them, but go slowly if it’s crazy hot outside. Once those seed pods are removed, your Stella D’Oro daylilies will refocus their energy back to producing flowers. (When the seed pods develop, the plant spends all its energy on making sure those seed pods continue to grow and develop.) Pretty soon, you’ll have those wonderful yellow blooms back! (I plan on writing up a post about these seed pods, as this is such a good question and one that gardeners encounter frequently, so thanks for asking!)
I ‘ve read up on deadhead but now I have long browning stems with no buds and pods forming. Did I overdo the deadheading? What do I do now?
Hi Judy — no worries. Those brown stems are left over from your deadheading. When you deadhead, you need to cut back that stem as close to the base of the stem as possible. I usually try to at least cut those stems down into the leaves so they aren’t as visible when they begin turning brown. The good news is that once those stems are brown, they should be easy to gently pull out without needing pruners. As for the seed pods, I just addressed this in the comment above, and it is a common problem, so no worries. Cut out those seed pod stems the same way: as close to the base as possible. Once you remove those seed pods, the plant will return its energy to producing flowers again. I’m in the midst of writing up a blog post about this, as I run into it as well.