Natural Division

If you just leave them alone… don’t do thing but give ordinary casual care…most lilies will divide regularly. If a lily plant of group is doing well, it is considered advisable to leave it alone…there are other methods of propagation that can be used. But when short, crowded stems announce “Time for a change”, the clump may be lifted with a fork and gently tugged apart. This is fun…like digging for buried treasure! Most likely you will be surprised, pleased and delighted to see how many plants you now have.

Stem Bulblets

When you lift your lilies for dividing you may find small bulblets in the lump… often clustered along the underground part of the stem. This is another easy, happens-by-itself method of propagation. Stem bulblets, on varieties that produce them, will be formed every year. You can hasten their growth to maturity by carefully detaching them in the fall, along with any little roots that might have been produced, and moving them to better positions… around the parent plant, or better still, into a carefully prepared nursery bed for a year or more. Don’t you have a nursery? You really should, if you plan to propagate many lilies. Baby bulblets grow so much faster and do so much better  in a special little bed of friable soil where they can be watched, watered, fed and kept free from weeds  and competition from other plants. Be sure the bed is raised a few inches to insure good drainage. A bit of shade does no harm…but no roots of trees, please.

Bulbils

Your nursery is also the place for planting aerial bulbils. You’ve seen the little black “beads” on the stems of Tiger Lilies, haven’t you? A few other lilies produce these bulbils in the axils of their leaves.  If gathered when fat and ripe, these little bulbs may planted in furrows like peas, and, in a year or two, produce a prodigious amount of good sized bulbs for your garden and to share with your friends.

Scales

Naturally, you don’t want your lilies to do all the multiplying by themselves…you want to get into the act too…and growing from scales will give you the chance. Most amateurs scale their lilies before they plant the bulbs. It does no harm to a firm fat bulb to snatch off a few scales…about four to eight … for propagation purposes. Do not be too greedy though, because these scales are your lily’s food supply for next year. Snap off the scales close to the bulbs and dust both bulb and scale with a fungicide.  The scales are spaced in a plastic bag of slightly damp peat moss, sphagnum, or vermiculite…fastened with a label and stored at approximately 70 degrees (F) for several weeks. If you keep peeking at them (and you will!) the fascinating process of bulblet formation may be watched through the polyethylene without opening the bag. Some folks detach the bulblets when they have formed roots and grown to good size. The bulblets may be planted, then, in pots if it is still winter, or stored in separate bags of moss in the refrigerator, and the scales returned for another round of incubation. Or, better,  the whole scale with bulblets attached may be planted and the scale used to help nourish the baby bulbs. Scale bulblets require 6 to 12 weeks chilling in the refrigerator, if they are not wintered outside, before making top growth. In the spring they may be planted in the nursery bed…spaced four inches apart. In a couple of years or so they will be blooming-size bulbs.