Follow up to my earlier question: Deadheading Daylillies?

Question

How would you go about deadheading daylillies? Cut the entire flower stem off? Just remove the bloom?

Answer 1

Just remove the spent blossom.

Deadheading, despite the ominous sound, is nothing more than trimming off spent flowers, keeping plants tidy, and ensuring maximum bloom time. Some gardeners worry that if done imperfectly, it might harm the plant. But unless you really whack away at it, it's tough to kill or badly deform a plant by deadheading.

First and foremost, deadheading keeps your garden attractive. Nearly all flowering plants benefit from at least a little deadheading. When blooms start to fade, brown, curl, or otherwise look unattractive, that's the time to trim them off, allowing the other flowers to shine.
Breaking off the flower where the stem meets the stalk is the way to sucessfully dehead long-stem flowers, such as this daylily, that grow in a sucession of blooms on a single stalk. Pull down gently on the spent flower until it cleanly snaps off. Breaking off faded daylilies will add to the plant's appearance if not the overall flower productivity.

Answer 2

I looked this up online and there are alot of opinions, here is what I found from the National Gardening Association

"Deadhead spent daylily flowers by breaking them off. When all the flowers on a scape (stem) have faded, snip off the scape near the base to keep plants tidy and prevent them from going to seed."

Personally, I deadhead the flowers after they die and then pull out the stems when they die (they pull out easily then). This has worked well, I have so many daylilies that they have been split and spread around the yard.
I don't think you can go wrong either way, they tend to be hardy--consider the fact that many daylilies grow wild in fields for years with no attention.

Answer 3

Other than for the sake of appearance, there is no reason to deadhead daylilies. They flower once, and that's it. If you want to, go ahead and cut off the whole stem.

Answer 4

I always remove the stems. When you dead head, the purpoe is to prevent the plant from exerting energy into a spent flower...same holds for the stem. Energy is still going to the stem and ifyou remove it, the energy will be diverted to the rest of the plant to encourage flower production.

Answer 5

Just take off the dried flower if you feel this is necessary. Wild daylilies do just fine without any maintenance.

Answer 6

just cut the flower part 1 inch below the flower , when you lift the bulb then cut the whole stock