If you have been disappointed to find that your daylilies are mostly over by the time you get home in the evening, then we have some good news for you. There is a kind of modern daylily called ‘Extended’, where the blooms open in the morning, like others, but stay open for up to 16 hours, so they are still in bloom well into the evening. Pretty cool, huh? Just the thing if you use your garden to relax after working hard all day – now you can enjoy the daylilies too. The Strawberry Candy Daylily is a fabulous variety of this type – plant it beside your terrace or barbeque area and toast it with a strawberry daiquiri. The big, full flowers are the wonderful creamy strawberry-red of those old-fashioned candies we loved as kids, and this prolific bloomer stands a good 2 feet tall in bloom, for great impact without being overpowered in a smaller space. It is a reliable rebloomer too, flowering like crazy again in late summer or early fall. Reblooming daylilies are definitely the way to go for easy flowers all summer and into fall, and here at the Tree Center we make sure we have the best, the most interesting and beautiful, and ones you can enjoy all evening too, like the wonderful Strawberry Candy Daylily.

Growing the Strawberry Candy Daylily

Size and Appearance

The Strawberry Candy Daylily is a tough and reliable perennial plant that will be in your garden for many, many years to come, giving pleasure every year. Each year it grows into a dense clump of narrow, mid-green leaves that develop into a clump between 2 and 3 feet across. Even when not in bloom the foliage is an attractive ground cover, standing about 18 inches high. It even remains semi-evergreen in winter, to remind you it is still around. The first flowers come between the earliest daylilies and the main bunch, probably by June in most areas, and in early May in the South. That first blooming lasts a long time, with each flower opening early in the morning and staying lovely well into the evening. Then in late summer or early fall, it does it all over again – wow! Each stem is heavily-branched, with an abundance of buds – up to 22, and stands 26 inches tall. A stem will bloom for almost 3 weeks. The large flowers are 4¼ inches across, with very broad petals that have showy ruffled edges and curve backwards, making a broad, very handsome bloom. The color is a delicious, edible creamy strawberry red, decorated with a broad band of darker red around the pale yellow throat. A gorgeous bloom admired and adored by everyone who grows it.

Using the Strawberry Candy Daylily in Your Garden

The larger size of the Strawberry Candy Daylily makes it perfect for a specimen in a small bed, and for terrific impact from a group of three plants. Spaced 18 to 20 inches apart it soon makes a solid, weed-resistant ground cover over slopes, banks, and sunny beds. Grow it around larger beds as an edging, or along a path or driveway. There isn’t a sunny spot in any garden that won’t be better with this great plant in it.

Hardiness

You can grow the Strawberry Candy Daylily no matter where you live – few plants are as reliable over a huge area, growing in zones 3 and 4, and also in zone 9, even in the South. In very cold areas reblooming will not be as reliable.

Sun Exposure and Soil Conditions

The Strawberry Candy Daylily will give you its best planted in full sun, although an hour or two of shade won’t hurt, especially in hot zones. Full sun is extra-important in cooler areas. It will grow well in just about any well-drained soil, and it is reported by gardeners to be particularly tough and reliable, blooming through all kinds of conditions. Richer soils that aren’t too dry will give the very best results, but it will be perfectly happy, once well-established, in the hottest and driest spots. It grows well in urban soils too, and just about anywhere that isn’t too wet.

Maintenance and Pruning

Deer and rabbits don’t enjoy the Strawberry Candy Daylily, and it is almost always free of pests and diseases, with good resistance to rust too, in areas where that can be a problem. Remove the spent flower stems once the last bloom falls, as developing seed pods reduces reblooming. In fall cut back the second batch of stems, and all the older foliage, leaving the new, shorter leaves that sprout in late summer standing through the winter – although they will usually die in cold zones.

History and Origin of the Strawberry Candy Daylily

Like all our modern daylily varieties, the one officially called ‘Strawberry Candy’ is a complex hybrid, reaching back to the first wild Hemerocallis which arrived from China and Japan in the 19th century. Patrick and Grace Stamile are a husband and wife team of hybridizers, based in Arroyo Grande, California. They are among America’s top breeders, and have been breeding daylilies for decades. Back last century they created a variety of ‘candy’ plants, with ‘Strawberry Candy’ perhaps the best and most enduring. It was released in 1989, a seedling of a cross between two older varieties, ‘Panache’ and ‘Siloam Virginia Henson’.

Buying the Strawberry Candy Daylily at the Tree Center

You can tell what a great plant the Strawberry Candy Daylily is by the rave reviews it has from daylily enthusiasts, and by the prizes it has won from the American Daylily Society. It won an Honorable Mention in 1993; the Annie T. Giles Award in 1994; the Don C. Stevens Award in 1995; the Award of Merit in 1996; and the top prize of them all, the Stout Silver Medal in 1998. With those kinds of recommendations you simply can’t go wrong growing this superb plant. Order now as we worked hard to track down some excellent plants, and they won’t be with us long.