Can You Cut Daylilies Back For a Second Bloom?

I do have an email here. This is from Lori, and she says, ‘can you cut daylilies back now and they’ll come back this summer? I wonder how long it will take.’

So, ok, great question. I’ve done this with my daylilies for many, many, many, many years. There are some rules when you do it to make you more successful. I always wait till the plants are done blooming. Some daylilies are actually still flowering right now. Don’t cut them back till they’re done. Enjoy the flowers.

But generally what happens after the daylilies are done blooming, they don’t look good. The leaves kind of fade out. They just don’t look good anymore. So once they’re done blooming, I’ll pull up from the ground up about two or three inches and I’ll take a good, sharp pair of scissors or pruners and I’ll chop them off, and then I’m going to fertilize them and water them. So if you don’t do the fertilizing in the watering process, it takes a long time for them to come back. They really don’t look good right away.

And most people want them to come back and look good. That’s why they have them in there. But if you fertilize and water them right afterwards, and if we stay super hot and super dry, you know, water them a couple of times a week like they’re a newly planted plant, and it will bounce right back.

And the Stellas and the ones that kind of repeat bloom, they may push more blooms, but the chances of them actually blooming again are not high. But at the same time, the foliage is going to look a heck of a lot better.

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