Welcome to Quarles Daylilies
Located in the Heart of the Bluegrass Country, near the Saddlebred Capitol of the World , we’re nestled conveniently between Lexington and Louisville, Kentucky, just a few miles off I-64.
We’re a diversified family farm raising a commercial Simmental/Angus cow/calf herd, daylilies, and market vegetables and fruits. All the work is done by my husband and I along with the help of our four children. While our kids sometimes will beg to differ, they have learned many life lessons from the seat of a tractor, the business end of a cattle head chute or the handle of a daylily digging shovel! The youngest was terribly excited this past year as she had graduated to learning the fine art of skid steer driving and she’s gotten very good at putting round hay bales in the feed rings.
We obtained our home based microprocessing license last year and began to market our salsas, and chutneys in addition to our jams, jellies, breads and vegetables at the local farmer’s markets. If you’re in Frankfort on a Saturday or the campground at the Kentucky Horse Park on Friday evening stop by and see us. We sell our products at both these local markets as well as from the farm.
We grow all types of daylilies, spiders, full forms, unusual forms, doubles, eyes and edges. You’ll find newer introductions from many major hybridizers as well as older award winning favorites on our sales lists. We offer many fine Munson cultivars for those intrigued with the Munson legacy. We currently carry over 1400 cultivars and make new additions yearly.
Our plants are field grown in the farm’s old tobacco patch. This soil is unamended and the plants are grown with little or no mulch. This helps us easily determine which plant a doer and which is a wimp. We don’t have the time or interest in babying a plant. If they don’t bloom well and increase at a reasonable rate for us then we don’t want them. We want you to be happy with the way our plants grow in your garden.
We have a gallery of several hundred pictures of our plants for you to inspect. These are not professional pictures. Some of them were taken by our 14 year old daughter. These are pictures of the plants directly as they grow in the field with no bells or whistles added. What you see in these pictures should be what you should expect to see when those plants bloom for you.
Last year was another rough year for farming and daylilies. Though we didn’t have the devastating freeze in April, we experienced another exceedingly dry year. Hay is on the short end and once again we bought to keep the cows fed. If we hadn’t watered the market garden we’d have had no produce at all. The only daylilies that got extra water were the ones that were newly planted. Towards the end of the bloom season the buds were starting to fall off and the blooms were looking rather pinched. In spite of very little water clear into late October the root systems of plants that we dug were in good shape. Folks that received fall shipments were very understanding about receiving drought dormant plants. I fully expect those plants to perform up to expectations this coming year for those customers.
We are a state inspected nursery selling healthy, true to name daylilies. We sell double fans and many times, on older varieties, you will receive multiple fans. We intend to be as generous as possible. We can be especially generous with our garden visitors on older cultivars. All plants are dug by me or the kids and are washed and packed with care. We want to ship divisions that you will be pleased to receive.
If you’re coming through Kentucky, please stop by and see us. We’re located about 8 miles off I-64 at Exit 43, which is the Waddy Exit. Our open gardens for 2009 will begin June 12 and run through July 19, Friday-Sundays from 10-5. If you’re in the neighborhood at another time please give us a call before dropping in just to make sure somebody’s going to be around.
This past year we had a wonderful time during open gardens visiting with customers and friends that stopped by to see our field. It was really fun to have new visitors get out of their cars and see for the first time more daylilies in more colors than they’d ever seen before. We truly appreciate and thank our repeat customers and those that tried us for the first time. We hope our service and quality of plants met your expectations. As always, your satisfaction with our plants is of first importance with us.
Stroll through our plant galleries. If you see something that interests you, give us call. We’ll be glad to answer any questions that you have and are always glad to talk daylilies with folks. If you’re in the area during bloom season please consider stopping by. We’d love to meet you and show you around!
Janet Quarles