Scott Alexander -Organic Daylily Grower

I tried to interview Scott several years ago, but he was deep into checking how his many organic micro-organisms were in his soil. This man is driven to excellence. He has given me permission to use his posting from the Robin. I hope you find it as interesting as I did. For 30 years, I have tried to garden organically ( with the possible exception of treating my roses for black spot with the unmentionables). His ideals have merit and deserve some attention. He calls his garden, Mountain View Daylily. On his web site, he offers an ezine. Visit his web site. When I read about him setting fire to all his daylilies, I almost cried and laughed at the same time. If someone sent me extra gifts (Aphids) with my plants, I might react in the same manner! He does have passionate opinions about his life's work!

As soon as I get some more information about Scott, I will post it on the web.

I promised more info about Scott. His catalogue came in the mail several days ago. It is just gorgeous! His BOOROOBIN MAGIC is a fine example of his edged and eyed breeding program. But I digress. How about some of the biographical information that I promised?

Scott spent his childhood in New Zealand! How I would love to visit that place! He also spent some time teaching in Papua New Guinea. Later, he decided to bring up his family in a quiet little Queensland town. The way he describes his first encounter with daylilies is priceless. It seems that a new neighbor spotted him planting a cottage-style garden. She gave him two daylilies and sparked Scott's curiousity. He soon found how just how many daylilies there were. Fascination with daylilies caused him to rethink his job options. He began a small nursery in Maleny because conditions for daylily culture and a nearby market for them, were much better. He started and mail order business and opened the gardens for visits.

In 1988, he found another block of land and started to create gardens so people could see how to blend the daylilies with other plants. Having more land also provided an opportunity to advance his hybridizing program.

Scott works with eyed and edged tetraploid varieties as well as some diploid double forms. One, IN EXCESS, is very fragrant. And you all know how I love fragrance!

HOW & WHEN WILL RUST ARRIVE IN AUSTRALIA?

It is inevitable that the dreaded rust will appear here just as the daylily aphid did back in 1984/85. The aphid came into the country because someone couldn't see the harm in sneaking in a daylily plant. It would be risky and very expensive for someone to try that again because there are often sniffer dogs checking out incoming passengers. But sniffer dogs wouldn't detect rust on the clothes or on the boots of any daylily person entering the country. So ... if anyone on this Robin is thinking of coming to Australia, please let us know and we'll Quarantine you for three months (which is what happens when we import plants)

: < ))

Back to the aphid problem in Aussie - it wasn't long before the mail order nurseries had spread these little devils all over the country. My business was very small at the time but I had about a half acre patch of seedlings and this area was devastated by aphid. They had no resistance to them and there were no predators. There were millions of them creating a sticky mess down in the center of the clumps; the foliage was dry and brown. What a mess. I was so angry about what they were going to do to my business, I decided I could do without daylilies and invest my money in some other business. I threw a match into them and the wind soon spread the fire throughout the patch. When it had died down, I packed a bag and spent two weeks down at the beach. When I returned I was hoping there would be no daylilies left alive but I was wrong. Here I am, 14 years later, having never sprayed one ounce of insecticide over my daylilies with anything other than one small trial of Safer's Insecticidal soap spray. PREDATORS ABOUND throughout my 6 acres, and predators abound throughout Australia - but only in the gardens of people who do not spray insecticides. The late Bill Munson didn't spray either but that was an example many growers chose not to follow. I have been wondering lately . . . if he were alive today, would he be spraying his huge nursery to prevent rust from entering?

John Mann writes - "For this reason, I am pleading with you to be cautious in applying anything to your garden if you do not have a REAL reason to suspect that there is a specific pathogen there on a plant." He is well qualified to plead with you to be rational.

As an organic grower of daylilies I would be really worried about rust entering the country. It is so virulent and the area in which most people live in Australia is so small, it would not be long before rust quickly spread. So what would I do if it appeared in Brisbane 80 miles away? What do I recommend that you do in the USA if you discovered it was that close? The first thing I think many gardeners need to realise that the leaves of plants are actually covered with beneficial fungi and bacteria and if you spray fungicides unnecessarily then you will kill them! Not only that, any fungicide that runs off and soaks into the soil will kill the beneficial fungi (and most likely, the beneficial bacteria, nematodes and protozoa as well).

Do I have degrees in anything to do with plants, soils and diseases? Am I qualified to vouch for this? NO, but Elaine Ingham at http://www.soilfoodweb.com/leaf.html should be well qualified. She writes:- "The work so far performed suggests that if 70% or more of the leaf surface is occupied by beneficial microorganisms, then foliar disease can be significantly reduced. Plants with 70% or more of the leaf surface occupied by beneficial microorganisms also appear to have higher leaf tissue concentrations of important nutrients."

If there is a danger of rust, I would first of all would ensure that my soil was well balanced with the appropriate minerals and micro-organisms (which should give me healthy plants). I would regularly give them a foliar fertiliser of liquid fish, seaweed and a product from my suppliers of organic inputs:- http://www.nutri-tech.com.au/ called Nutri-Life Bio-Plex. (*Please Read about it in the last paragraph)

Surely, this is a better approach, don't you think? The use of organic products has many benefits to the plant, soil AND TO YOUR OWN HEALTH. What will I do if rust does appear, even after these preventative methods? Will I put a match to the farm and give up a million dollar investment? At 60+ years of age ... and my stance about the use of chemicals ... I think I'll gracefully retire.

Someone wrote "I feel Organics without lab monitoring, is a "fools paradise," which can be far worse, or as bad as anything chemicals can do." And someone wrote in another Robin "I'm yet to be convinced that organic growing is the way to go." Statements like these are laughable! How did farmers and gardeners grow anything before chemical companies brainwashed everyone into believing that the answer was in a plastic bag?!?! Did the millions of Chinese who have been growing rice and vegies for thousands of years need Labs and artificial fertilisers? Did the Egyptians? The Indonesians? The Europeans?

I plead with all of you to take stock and stop the indescriminate use of chemicals. You've got rampart leaf-streak disease, spring sickness, crown rot, and now rust. What will the next problem be? Who would ever have guessed that nature would take care of the aphid problem on my farm? How is that I can grow 1300 different cultivars, and not lose a single plant to crown rot? (the answer will be in a future posting)

Perhaps nature will also take care of the rust problem - if it is allowed to. The answer in the future may be in the humble roadside lily (or even Stella de Ora?). No one is going to spray the millions of plants lining roads throughout the USA are they? What coping mechanisms will they have? They could be worth studying.

Thank you for reading this far.

Scott Alexander

http://www.daylily.com.au (new gallery images, e-zine & new pricelist will be appear very soon)

Ellen's Note: You will like his site. The following paragraph is referenced with an asterisk (*)in .

"Nutri-Life Bio-Plex. This product produces a complex, multi-dimensional growth response when foliar sprayed. It includes finely-tuned nitrogen-fixers, which utilise carbon exudates from the leaf to fix nitrogen from the atmosphere directly into the leaf; a range of microbes, which release natural growth hormones as metabolic by-products, such as gibberellic acid, cytokinins, auxins and indole-acetic acid; species that produce vitamins, including the B group, Vitamin E and Vitamin C; and also a range of organisms that secrete an anti-fungal toxin on the leaf surface to bolster disease resistance."

I got a copy of his newsletter. It is both chatty and informative. You can subscribe at his web site. Cheers! May this gentlemen and his family continue to thrive!