When to Sow and Harvest Lilies? Growth Cycle, Planting Methods and Varieties

Lily is a plant of the genus Lilium in the family Liliaceae, native to China, and is a plant that can be enjoyed ornamentally, eaten, and used medicinally. So when are its seeds generally sown and harvested? How long is the growth cycle? How is it planted? What varieties are there? According to Liliaceae data, lily flowers are large, mostly white, funnel-shaped, and borne singly at the top of the stem. The capsule is long ovoid with blunt ridges. Buds appear in early June, flowering begins in early July, full bloom occurs in mid-July, flowering ends in late July, and the fruiting period is July to October.

When are lily seeds generally sown and harvested?

Planting:

1. The planting time is preferably August to September. Apply sufficient base fertilizer one month before planting, and plow the soil deeply; compost and plant ash can be used as base fertilizer. Planting should be relatively deep (generally a depth of 3 to 4 times the diameter of the bulb) to help the roots and stems absorb nutrients. In the north, if planted too shallow, it is prone to freezing damage in winter and will affect the growth of roots and small bulbs. During the growth period, cultivation and weeding should be avoided to prevent damaging the roots and stems. If conditions permit, some crushed wood chips can be scattered on the planting ground as soil cover. This can both prevent weed growth and preserve moisture and lower soil humidity, benefiting bulb development.

2. Pot planting is preferably carried out in September to October. The growing medium should preferably be mixed with leaf mold, sandy soil, and garden soil in a 1:1:1 ratio, and sufficient fully decomposed compost and a small amount of bone meal should be applied at the bottom of the pot as base fertilizer. The planting depth is generally about 2 to 3 times the diameter of the bulb. Lilies do not have very high fertilizer requirements; usually, applying fertilizer when growth begins in spring and at the early flowering stage is sufficient.

Harvesting:

1. The underground bulbs of edible lilies can be harvested throughout the year. However, the eating flavor, commodity value, and so on vary with the harvest time. Generally, in October, after the stems wither, after a period of cooling, harvesting around the Beginning of Winter, the sugar content of lily bulbs increases rapidly.

2. After lily bulbs overwinter in the field, the products harvested in March to April of the following year also have good marketability. During the growing season, for special needs, lily bulbs can also be harvested.

3. Under normal circumstances, farmers are unwilling to harvest lily bulb products during the lily growing season. Timely harvesting of lily bulb products in late autumn generally starts from late October to mid-to-late November when the soil freezes.

What lily varieties are there?

There are about 120 species of original lily species; 46 species and 18 varieties are distributed in China, of which 36 species and 15 varieties are endemic. There are 40-50 species used for horticultural breeding and cultivation, and only about 20 species are used for commercial production, mainly including Lilium longiflorum, Lilium dauricum, Lilium lancifolium, Lilium pumilum, Lilium auratum, Lilium speciosum, Lilium henryi, Lilium regale, Lilium candidum, Lilium davidii, Lilium tsingtauense, Lilium buschianum, Lilium japonicum, Lilium Madonna, and Lilium candidum Malta.