"what about... ....pulling them up by the stems?"

I doubt this will work very well. Even if you pull the main bulb up in this way, you'll probably leave some of the stem bulblets behind for later years.

I don't think you'll find pulling them up a satisfactory method. Bulbs tend to settle in tight and, more often than not, you'll come away with just a stem and the bulb still buried.

I would not try to pull the bulb out. you will break the roots off. Lilies are never dormant and they need their roots.I would water well and try to use a garden trowl and your hands.

I usually use a spading fork when I dig up bulbs. It's no guarantee of not spearing bulbs I've forgotten were there (like daffodils), but seems safer to me than a shovel. Maybe a trowel and your hands would be the safest, if not the quickest.

I would explore a little with a narrow trowel & hands, then when I knew where the roots & bulbs were, I would use a fork -- a turning fork, spading fork, whatever I had. Carefully.

The fork and hands approach would probably be best - lily bulbs kinda corkscrew themselves deeper into the soil over time, to better support the stems and escape frost, so there is a good chance the bulbs you planted last year are deeper than where you originally put them. Pulling the stems won't likely do anything at all except break the stem off.

Hah!
Success! At least with the pull out part --just yesterday! I had a too tall ugly lily (cancun) that is mixed in with precious camasssia bulbs I don't want to disturb so... I grabbed it and gave a tug and it came up! I probably left some small bulbs behind but what I pulled up was a mass of bulbs attached to the stalk. I can pull out and discard any babies next year.

I think this would be a good time to try- before the stem gets weathered and breaks off.

Of course I can't say this is a good time for the lily. Fall is best- but I'm finding them to be quite resilient to abuse- especially asiatics. But- it wasn't a bulb I liked anyway...

Karen

Thanks for all the help! I am labeling the varieties today so I can move them around later. In my case I do want the lilies so it looks like there is no easy way out.

I could use some kind of very narrow pitchfork. Something like 3 skinny tines close together, but still long enough so I could step on it. I think it would be very useful for this. Is that what a spading fork is? My pitchfork has 4 flat tines and is way too wide for the space I have. I wouldnÂt want to use my hands to push it down (I have carpal tunnel syndrome).

Anyone know if such a thing exists and a name I can use to search for it?

A related issue:
To mark them I am trying to twist tie some card of card onto the stem. I am afraid of spearing bulbs so donÂt want to use a stake-type plant label. How do you label? It only has to last until fall digging time.

How I dig them up is a variation of what you described. The first time I dug lilies up, the stems were already dead, and my shovel split a couple bulbs, so I decided I'm not doing that anymore. I move them at any time during the gardening season before the stem is dead, because I need the stem to help guide me to exactly where the bulb is.

This is how I dig them up now, and it works very well for me. I have hard clay soil. First I soften up the soil by letting the hose run very slowly right next to the stem for about 15 minutes so it will get down to where the bulb is. If I have more than one to do, I let the water run on the next one while I'm removing the previous one.

After the soil is wet, I dig out the soil around the stem with my hand trowel. I gently keep doing this deeper and deeper, following the stem down until I can see the bulb and its roots and its bulblets if it has any. Then I dig up the bulb and the roots and put it in a bucket and cover the bulb in the bucket with some soil so it doesn't dry out and go dig out the next bulb.

Deanna

Deanna, This sounds like a good technique. My garden is so packed That IÂm sure to kill something nearly every time I dig with a shovel.

A question: you find there are no ill effects from moving them before the foliage is brown? Half the time IÂve planned on moving something the stem had dried and dropped off before I had thought it would, leaving me with no way to locate the bulb. I ended up moving some this spring which IÂm sure was a bad idea, but I had "lost" them in the fall.

Linnea,

I've had no ill effects from moving them while the stems are alive. In fact, I've moved them when they're in bud, and they bloom just fine after the move. You'd never know they hadn't been there all along!

Deanna