Flowers To Grow In Shade

Daylilies are beginning to move beyond simplicity

-The best time to plant a daylily in the South is early spring or late fall.
-Most daylilies prefer full sun. They can tolerate some shade but need about six hours of sun. The pastel shades are most beautiful in full sun while darker colors seem to handle partial shade better.
-Daylilies perform best when planted in well-drained soil and spaced about 18 to 24 inches apart.

American Hemerocallis Society

Ron Hood and his wife have had daylilies in their yard for 30 years but never really paid close attention to them. Hood, now a member of the West Alabama Daylily Society, became seriously interested in the flower about five years ago when he started to see some of the newer varieties.

“The modern daylilies that the hybridizers are producing, well, you wouldn’t even know they are the same flower,” he said.

Hues include everything from shades of yellow, red, purple, pink and melon. The throat of the flower might be green, yellow, gold, orange, apricot or melon. The only colors not available yet are true blue, stark white and deep black.

The flowers can also vary in size. “They come in different sizes, from the smallest at about 21⁄2 inches, to the largest that is 10 or 11 inches across,” Hood said. “There are so many you can almost get addicted collecting different ones.”

Hood said he has thousands of the plants in his yard in Northwood Lake.

The daylily is native to Asia but can be found in many areas of the US. Its genus, Hemerocallis, comes from Greek words that mean “beauty” and “day,” a reference to the fact that each flower blooms for a single day. But there are several buds on each stalk with several stalks in each clump, providing a long show of colorful blooms.

According the American Hemerocallis Society, the daylily is often called the perfect perennial. It is drought tolerant when necessary, can survive in a wide range of climates, and has few pests and disease problems. Varieties bloom from late spring until autumn. There are about 60,000 registered cultivators of daylilies.

Ruth Watts of Centreville is president of the West Alabama Daylily Society. “We meet four times a year; twice in the fall and twice in the spring,” she said. The group holds auctions two times a year at McFarland Mall, where members bring plants from their gardens.

“The bidding starts at half price of what is listed in the reference book “Eureka” which is published by the American Hemerocallis Society,” Watts said. The public is welcome at the auctions.

Mailhos - cuisine de jardin: Courgette

Part of the squash and cucumber family but unloved by many including my mother who instead of appreciating new life and food in her garden in Ireland, complains about the glut of courgettes she has to deal with every year. So why does she grow them? Why doesn't she feed her neighbours with them? The answer is simple - many people dislike the bloody vegetable, grow them because its simple and never know what to do with them. Obviously courgettes do not inspire! Fed lots of compost at the beginning when transferred from the greenhouse to their patch, they still need a weekly dose of nettle tea and lots of straw to keep the soil moist. At the beginning, the young plants are a delicacy for snails and slugs but if you can protect them in their first week with wood ash, they will survive. My rather large mistake this year was to underestimate their growing potential. A courgette doesn't like to share his bed with a cucumber so keep them well apart. I thought I had done so when installing my teepee to help my Kiwano cucumber climb but the courgette plants have grown so huge, they are also touching the teepee and putting my Kiwano harvest in jeopardy. Courgettes need to be eaten very young when their skin is glossy and the flowers are still holding on. In Italy they sell them with the flowers still attached to prove their youth. The nutty flavour and crispy flesh disappear very quickly so they need to be found fresh and eaten the same day. If a courgette is bigger than a 10cm just forget about the centre and eat the flesh nearer the skin where all the taste is concentrated. Health wise a courgette is far down on the super-food scale, unlike their winter cousins of squash which are packed with natural beta-carotene. They start tasting perfect when grated with a good olive oil, a squeeze of lemon and a few fresh herbs like mint, basil and thyme. The male flowers need to be dipped into a very light batter and deep fried and served with sea salt and lemon. My mother can still can make an overgrown obese adult courgette taste great collapsing with its stuffing of  rice and dried fruit and baked until almost caramelised but I prefer them deep fried as a scapece or sliced thinly and grilled on the garden plancha. Prepare a large plate with a double layer of kitchen paper and heat the oil to 180° in a deep saucepan. Dip the flowers one by one in the batter, making sure they are completely coated and let any excess drip off.

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