Invasive Day Lilies :(

Judy Starr

4 years ago

last modified: 4 years ago

My Mom's front garden was a wasteland of DayLilies ( common orange daylilies) .

I hope I'm not insulting people that absolutely love the plant ?

A friend and I spent hours digging them out soil with tubers plus roots spent 5 hours and were hardly finished .

Our Gardner had his staff take on the challenge of removing the rest .

We don't want them to return because we are planting Coneflowers & Autumn Sedem to replace them .

The space is empty now only with Plants we want to keep .

I was told that using Vinegar , Salt & Baking Soda plus a little Dawn Detergent in a Spray would make them RIP .

Please if anyone can let me know if this works ?

Boiling water is another way of making them go to Heaven but I don't my friend burn herself :(

I'm leaving my Mom's home in a few days my friend will be taking over the JOB !

Please if anyone has an answer that's better the one above " Vinegar , Salt & Baking Soda plus a little Dawn Detergent in a Spray " please let me know .

Thanks So Much ,

Judy

judy@judystarr.com

BTW I bought Lime to make the soil have a better PH and remove the vineger etc....

I appreciate all the comments here TY so Much !

Featured Answer

Brad KY 6b

4 years ago

last modified: 4 years ago

I agree with Kay. That will make the soil unusable. [it would not kill the daylily plants just destroy the soil].

Are you talking about the common orange daylilies? It will be a battle for years. Nothing will kill them and the smallest root will grow back. I have the orange ones in my front hybrid daylily bed that were there when I moved in and have been fighting with them since the late 90's. The only way I know of is to take out the daylilies, take out quite a few inches of soil and sift it all in a screen sifter. Then MAYBE they will be all gone. FYI if you are talking about these, they are not what this forum is about; we've all gotten rid of them from our beds. I personally have a few that grow in the rocky area by my creek where nothing else but weeds will grow but do not collect them.

If they are hybrid daylillies, if you dig them out, chances are likely that they will be gone. Possible one may grow but easily removed and then done.

There's been a lot of posts about this through the years and all come to this similar conclusion. Sorry there is not a better answer.

Brad

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Comments (8)

organic_kitten
4 years ago
You do that and nothing will grow.

kay
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shive
4 years ago
I agree. That formula - especially the salt - will destroy the area for the plants you want to put there.

Debra
three4rd47
4 years ago
Sorry I can't help but, if it were me (being very fond of daylilies since it's one of the few perennials that do well in my soil), I'd say the more the merrier! Coneflowers are great - also really easy to grow. I have them, along with black-eyes susans, right next and mixed in with daylillies. Whatever fills in the spaces and blooms (except for obvious weeds), I'm good with it. Hope you find a way to landscape it the way you choose.
PRO
beesneeds
4 years ago
Fulva lillies. Or I assume it's fulva being spoken of and not the hundreds of other daylillies out there. If you only spent 5 hours digging, then you probably missed half of them. Dig back through again, and be prepared to keep weeding them out for a few years a least.

Do not poison the earth. Salt is poison, baking soda is a salt and works the same as salt as a poison. Sure, it's natural, but there's good reason why salting the earth was one of the more horrifying war measures taken to hurt the enemy. Stuff don't grow where the ground has been salted, and not just the plant you don't want there.

You can try hand dabbing with a systematic weed killer on the small plants as they reappear if you don't have a lot coming back. If you have time and can cover over the garden now till next summer or later, completely cover the area and smother them out.
Brad KY 6b
4 years ago
beesneeds, no weed killer kills daylilies. Even round-up doesn't.
PRO
beesneeds
4 years ago
You might not be using the right weed killer Brad, or maybe not ruthlessly enough. Round up can be less than effective because it's often not concentrated and mixed mixed with other for spraying. Often it needs multiple applications through the growing season to finally really start to killing them, they are stubborn. Dabbling with a concentrate on small plants can work, triclopyr works great. I use it on the fulvas that want to pop up in the asphalt cracks at the edges of some of their beds. I use a small paintbrush to dabble with to make sure I only get that one fulva with the poison.

I got several fulva patches and borders in the yard, came with the house. Some spots have been dug out and are covered, some are heavily weeded, a couple let loose to get as wild as they want. I love them and they are also right tasty so I like to have a lot for harvest. But they do need to be tended to and there's various ways to do it. I also have a lot of other kinds of lillies in the gardens, and wish they would be even an inth as invasive as the fulvas can be when allowed to.
organic_kitten
4 years ago
I actually got rid of my orange ones by repeated digging, but it took a few years and a lot of digging to do it. I am after a mean vine that grows roots underground and pops up in daylily beds now. It is always something isn't it?

kay