They need their individual personal space to grow well. If you don’t want to dig them ALL, you don’t have to. Instead, dig every-other-one and give them away or pitch them.

The point is to allow each iris rhizome (or lily root/bulb) room.

Edited to add: or you could contact a local gardening group (Master Gardeners?) and tell them your dilemma. Gardeners are nuts about plants and might do the digging for you in return for your “extra” rhizomes/bulbs.

well ... yes.. but.. if you got a million.. no reason you cant do some now.. replant.. see how they do next year ... i suspect when you see how well they respond... you will wish you took care of them all ....

do more in spring.. perhaps by summer.. get rid of the rest .. etc ..

if they are underperforming.. i really dont know why you would keep all the extras.. or leave gobs of them there ...

but no.. you dont have to do it all in one godforsaken back breaking weekend ...

after you dig up a bunch.. you should be able to tell whats good to keep.. and whats not.. throw those away ... the roots will tell you .. and will probably also tell you why they havent been doing good.. well??? .. whatever ..

ken

For daylilies [which are not lilies-lilies have bulbs], dig up the clump, pull them all apart [you can use a large screw driver to pry them apart if they are stubborn, some are some aren't hard at all. Then keep maybe 3 or 4 of the healthiest looking plants and replant. Don't just take up half the clump. Those left are still terribly crowded. Some will bloom well the next year, some will take a year or two to do well. It will be worth the wait.

Offer the extras to neighbors, friends and family.

BTW, are we talking hybrid daylilies, or the regular orange kind [ditch lilies] or the short yellow Stellas lots of people have? What I described above is for the hybrids. For oranges, they typically don't need divided unless you want less. Less of them is hard to have. They send shoots under the ground and take over everywhere. For them, just take and pitch what you don't want. You can use the shovel and split and dig up part that way. You can't hurt them--or get rid of them.

For Stella's, they multiply constantly. Hard to keep them down too. I call them McLillies. Supposed to bloom all summer but the reality is they have one good bloom time in the spring then barely bloom the rest of the summer. Cut them with a shovel or split them like hybrids.. Doesn't matter.

Thank you @Brad KY 6b for this thorough advice! I have orange ditch lilies..and yes...I am seeing that they have taken over everywhere! Ditch lilies don't need to be divided and replanted, right? I think I will take your advice and just dig a bunch of them up and toss them and see what happens come spring.

Beware......digging them is very tough work. Dig what you can and lay cardboard or landscape paper down. The paper will kill whatever the digging didn’t. I had a patch on the side of the house. Took two years Covered and they were all dead. As far as Stellas go, they do bloom all summer but like many plants they need attention. If you remove spent blooms regularly and remove the seed stalks they will bloom easily into fall. I know, I had an entire row of them along my deck for the past 10+ years. Only recently removed to extend the deck.

debra

AS Bradsais ditch lillies are all but impossible to kill...and when you think they are gone, another will pop up anyway.

kay