Expert: Long Island Gardener - 7/31/2008

Question
QUESTION: we are having a wedding 6/13/09 at our home in Baltimore. I would like to plant white lillies for the occasion and to cut.Is there a type that would be in bloom at that time?

ANSWER: Lilies for blooming this year were planted LAST FALL or THIS PAST SPRING.  See if you can have some bloomers shipped from one of the wholesalers for your wedding and potted up here.  Tricky proposition, but who cares.  Thanks for writing.

L.I.G.

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: what variety of lilly will bloom im mid june?

Answer
Asiatics are APPROXIMATE mid-June bloomers.  But this is a very tricky balancing act.  A lot depends on the soil temperature, the air temperature, planting depth, the health of the Bulb itself, the Sun it gets (or not).  If you are in business to make things bloom, you control ALL of these factors and things bloom like clockwork.  But when you depend on Mother Nature, anything could happen.

I have a driveway lined with Irises that began as a single clump in the 1960s, a good 40 years ago.  Seems my little brother wanted to give our mother a Mother's Day gift.  But he was a little kid.  He had no money.  He walked around until the answer came to him in the form of a clump of very pretty violet Irises just beginning to bloom.

So he yanked them out of the ground, ran down the street with them until he got home, and potted them up.

Mother was delighted.  Never did find out where little Roddy got those pretty flowers.

And they bloom every year, and increase, right around Mother's Day.  Of course, Mother's Day does not fall exactly on the same day every year.  It has to be a Sunday.  But some years, those Irises bloom early.  And others, they bloom late.  Not only that, they don't all bloom in unison!  Some open today, then others open tomorrow, for about 2 weeks.  They're all next to one another on the driveway, getting almost the same Sun, the same Soil, the same air and day length.  But they will never open together.

So a symphony of Lilies, all in bloom, is absolutely splendid.  Nevertheless, you don't know what's going to happen until the day of the Wedding.

Growth Regulators have been studied by molecular biologists for decades.  Once it was understood that they direct plant development, private companies started sprouting up and marketing them.  Growers today pretty much depend on Growth Regulators to control flowering and other processes.  Gibberellins control cell elongation and flowering.  Cytokinin controls cell division and organ enlargement, and it prolongs bloom.  You can go crazy with some of these chemicals.  If you knew what you were doing, you might be able to change the course of Nature and get the flowers to open when it fits in with your schedule.

But that takes practice.  I don't think you have the luxury of practice.  Or do you?