Surprise! Your lilies are acting normal
Q: My surprise lilies have sent up leaves but no flowers this year. What could be wrong?
L. K. of Okawville
A: There is nothing wrong with your surprise lilies. They send up just leaves in spring to build up energy to produce the flowers in summer, but later the leaves dry up and disappear and most gardeners forget about them until they begin sending up just floral shoots in summer.
They are not members of the lily family at all but belong to the amaryllis plant family. Their scientific name is Lycoris squamigera and they have quite a few common names besides surprise lily. I should have started the answer calling them “naked ladies” as they are known in certain areas. There is also the common name of “resurrection lily” because in the summer just bunches of pink flowers on stems appear with no leaves being produced.
Q: Why do people hate dandelions in their yard? I remember that my grandmother used to make a spring salad of the smaller leaves to help out our digestive system?
B. T. of Mascoutah
A: It probably started when the sport of golf became popular and dandelions and white “Dutch clover” slowed down the play. Golfers could not find the balls that they drove off the tee. To speed up the game, courses began spraying to kill the flowering weeds in the grass. Then the push began to eliminate these same plants in home lawns so they resembled golf courses.
I can also remember eating a spring salad containing small dandelion leaves to “aid the spring digestion.” Today, people sell dandelion seeds just for this purpose. They also suggest eating another salad of dandelion leaves in the fall, depending upon the time of year the dandelion seeds are planted.
In earlier times, home lawns were planted with the white Dutch clover to help with nitrogen fertilization of the lawns in a natural way. There were also a lot more dandelions and white clover for the honeybees to pollinate. You could also find more wildflowers in the lawns at that time as well, with the small light pink “spring beauty” wildflowers, small yellow flowering violets and purple violets.
Maybe with all the trouble the bees are having, we should try living with the weedy, small flowering’ plants in our lawns and take the time to enjoy the small spots of wildflower colors instead of speeding on with life and ignoring the gifts of color that nature gives us. Just a thought!
Q: Our peas have germinated, but when they are about 2 inches high, they seem to wilt and get smaller. What’s wrong?
D. T. of Caseyville
A: Your problem is root maggots, which attack beans, carrots, melons spinach, cabbage, onions and radishes. You need to rotate your plantings from year to year. Also you will need to use an insecticide labeled for these pests and apply it to the soil at the same time you plant the seeds. Any time you notice this problem remove the infected plants immediately.
Do it now
- Finish pruning dead and damaged tree limbs.
- Allow the spring bulbs to naturally die down before cutting off the leaves.
This story was originally published April 7, 2016 at 4:19 AM with the headline "Surprise! Your lilies are acting normal."