Down on daylilies looking dreadful

For several years now my daylilies have looked terrible. It’s the leaves — they get streak, a fungus disease, which causes the foliage to start to die back even as the plants begin to bloom.

Not a pretty picture: The crappy-looking daylilies in my garden

I’m not big on fighting disease in the garden. I have too much on my plate to fuss about individual plants and, besides, there are no fungicides available to home gardeners in Ontario since the so-called cosmetic pesticide ban came into force last year. I rarely used commercial fungicides anyway, and I’m not about to start mixing up homemade baking soda concoctions to spray on my plants. Life is too short. (Although it has occurred to me that leaf streak could be a disease of wet years — which this season and the past two have been. During the drought seasons before that, our daylilies didn’t look as bad.)

In any case, my plan is simply to give up on daylilies. Last year we tore a bunch of them out, and this year I’m turfing even more. In their place, we will be planting cast-iron stuff that always does well for us, such as the ubiquitous Goldsturm rudbeckia, and Hameln fountain grass, and shorter varieties of Eupatorium (Joe Pye).

For some reason, it’s the newer daylily varieties that appear have the worst problems with fungus disease. Over at the golf course across the road, where I designed the plantings around the parking lot, I chose an older yellow-flowering daylily called Hyperion, and it looks great while mine just look crappy.

Hyperion daylilies thriving in the garden around the golf course parking lot

I may yet take a chance on Hyperion in my garden, although the spores from leaf streak might affect the plants if I put them in exactly the same spots.

For more information on daylily leaf diseases, visit my website for details: leaf streak and rust. The articles were written by my friend Sandy Perry, a retired horticulturalist who knows her plant diseases.

Tagged as: daylilies, fungus disease