Hi Elton,
I'm sorry to hear that you've been laid up for so long! That is a long time for a gardener to be down. I know from my own experience in 2018 when I had an accident and shattered my collarbone and required surgery to put in a metal plate and screws. The accident happened in July at the peak of daylily and gardening season! And of course, the collarbone had to be my right side which is my dominant side! I worked really hard at physical therapy to get back in the garden last year. I wish you the best.
BTW, I have just reopened my sale of daylily seeds if you want to try them out. They are really very easy to grow and they grow fast. It seems that everyone has their own way of starting them and no one way is better than the other, it is just a personal preference. My seeds have a near-perfect germination rate and are ready to grow so you could actually just plant them as you would any seed and I know they would grow. But if you want to do as I do, I just spray a little bit of water from a sprayer bottle with a few drops of *hydrogen peroxide mixed in, into each little baggie that I send the seeds in. Then you just leave the packets somewhere warm and you will see little sprouts after a few days. Once you see the sprouts you just pot them up. I grow mine under lights but they will also do fine in a south-facing bright window. Daylilies are the easiest plants to grow. The seedlings you will get will all be different so there will be lots of surprises! Some will resemble one or the other parent, or a blending of both, or they could look like 'grampa' or 'granny' a generation back
Sometimes you get one that looks like the mailman.
It's so much fun because they are like a box of chocolates.
*The hydrogen peroxide in the water is to keep the seeds from molding and also it helps them germinate. You can also use the solution to water the seedlings with. I find that bottom-watering the seedlings helps prevent damping off. I have never lost a seedling. The recipe is: 1-1/2 teaspoons hydrogen peroxide to 1 cup water.
Also, if you prefer not to start the seeds indoors over the winter, just store the seeds in their packets DRY in the vegetable crisper of your fridge. They will keep. Then plant outdoors directly in the soil.
*I also wanted to add to this: daylily seeds benefit from a stratification period. This is accomplished in many ways. Some people put the seeds into baggies of moist vermiculite and keep refrigerated for a minimum of 4 weeks. I did that but found it difficult to locate the seeds once it was time to plant. Now I just take a small square of heavy, absorbent paper towel, spray it with the hydrogen peroxide and water mixture just enough to be damp but not sopping wet, then place the seeds in the center and fold up the paper towel. I put each into marked baggies and then into the vegetable crisper of the fridge. You can even use the baggies the seeds came in. My seeds were so fertile that they sprouted in the fridge during the stratification process. I did an experiment this year and stratified half my seeds and the other half I did not. The germination rate was about the same. But that was for MY seeds. In the past I have bought seeds and they would not germinate for many weeks unless I stratified them first. Stratifying them speeds up the process of getting them to germinate once planted.
