Day Lily Midges Are Assholes...

So a couple of years ago, out of nowhere, my day lily flowerbuds suddenly started getting deformed. I opened a few of the buds, but there was nothing inside.... or so I thought.

It turned out that there was something inside, but at the stage that I was looking inside them, the things weren't big enough to be seen with the naked eye.

In fact, they were so miniscule, they weren't even visible with a magnifying glass.

I took several pictures of the buds, just mystified as to what the heck was going on. Did my day lilies have a disease? Was I going to have to rush to rip them all out before it could spread to my "good" day lilies*??

Anyway... I had looked inside several & saw nothing.... Then a friend was over a week or so later & I showed her the deformities, and she cracked one open... and there they were....

Little maggoty things.

LOTS AND LOTS of little maggoty things! Yeesh.

I tried googling what they could be, but found nothing that seemed to work. I probably did see some day lily midge results, but the websites had been published a few years ago & stated that the range was the USA & British Columbia, so I just passed over those.

But I wasn't taking into account climate change. Day Lily Midges were on the move, into new areas, thanks to the climate changing so much. And it wasn't until they officially changed our zone in 2016* that I considered that maybe this was the issue, maybe these things have gotten in here.

(*Edmonton, Alberta is now classified as Zone 4 -- we used to be zone 3 - 3b on the Canadian Zone Map)

AND/OR... maybe they came in on a shipment of day lilies from somewhere that was infested*. That happens a lot, despite the border agents checking things over, these midges, even the adults, are so tiny they are barely visible on the wing, so I highly doubt that they would have been able to see the pupae or pupae casings if they checked. And they probably weren't shipping day lilies that had flower buds yet, because they try to time it so that they start booming in whatever greenhouse or garden centre they end up in.
(*that's where Scarlet Lily Beetles came from -- but that is an entirely other post!)

They are migrating from Western Canada to Eastern Canada, as well as coming north from the USA, and probably tagging along in shipments of day lilies from places where they are common.

 Deformed Day Lily buds

 More deformed buds

 Sooo many deformed flower buds!

This one is just chock full of midge larvae! They eat the flower petals, as they try to grow,
from the inside... then when they've eaten enough & grown big enough, they drop down
out of the flower bud into the soil, where they burrow in to pupate.

They overwinter as pupae, and the adults come up from the soil in early spring to mate & use their long ovipositors to pierce the flower buds as they start growing. It's like a hypodermic needle; I
think everyone has seen those wasps with them, they look like a huge stinger,
but they're not stingers, they are for laying eggs, usually inside something.

 The adults lay their eggs inside the flower buds, and once they're done, they die.

From what I have read online, the adults are so tiny that you really can't see
 them, even if you're standing there watching the day lilies.

UGH.

 Ewwww! I was trying to get decent pictures of these things to show everyone. There were just thousands of them.

 A bit closer so you can really see how small they can be.

Now, the question is:  How do we control these things??

Don't bother using pesticide sprays, because the larvae don't eat the surfaces that would be hit with the sprays.

The adults are so hard to spot, so trying to just randomly sp[ray the air around the bloom buds wouldn't be of much use -- AND you'd kill every insect flying around the flowerbed, which would be VERY BAD! I doubt anyone would want to start digging around in the soil at the base of the day lily looking for pupae, since they are so tiny it would be pretty easy to miss them.

You would have to interrupt their life cycle somewhere along the way.

And birds? Forget it, they're not even aware there is anything inside the flower buds. Not that many people would want birds destroying the flower buds to get at them anyway, right?

The easiest stage to interrupt their life cycle is the larvae stage.

Check your day lilies every day when they are growing flower buds. The minute a flower bud looks deformed, snap it off, break it open and drop it in a bucket with hot, soapy water. Between the heat & the soap they will cook or drown.
(I am a drowner, not a squisher or sprayer when it comes to pests in my yard).

I have several day lilies is my yard, so I make my rounds as soon as they start growing flower buds. I check at least once per day

DON'T just leave them on the plant!
And whatever you do, do not break them off & drop them on the ground! The larvae will continue to eat & then just crawl out into the soil to pupate.
And don't compost them! The larvae will survive just fine inside the flower bud in the middle of a compost bin or heap, and they will instead pupate in the compost bin or in whatever soil they've landed on!

They can completely ruin a day lily in the course of a year or two. 

Have you been hit with Day Lily Midges yet? Were you aware they even existed?
If you are east of at least Manitoba, they may not have reached you just yet -- but keep your eyes on  your day lilies!

* At first, it was just the Tawny Day Lily that was affected.... and I was planning to rip them out anyway because I was told they were "tiger lilies" back before I knew much about gardening, but it turns out they're a super-common, kinda invasive day lily also known as "The Ditch Lily" in some places because they have escaped & are just spreading everywhere... which they are trying to do in my yard, too, grr. Anyway, it was only those ones affected... turns out it's because they start setting buds & blooming first. So now, I've decided to leave them in, although I will tame them a bit, just to act as "bait" for the midges to lay their eggs. If I rip them all out, any pupae left in the soil, or adults flying around looking for suitable nurseries, they will go to my much-nicer day lilies....I'd rather keep them somewhat confined to the Tawny ones if I can!

Some pictures of my healthy day lilies...

 This is one of the "Tawny" day lilies. The flower stalks get to be at least my height (5'6")! Unfortunately these ones are really bad for sending out babies, and they will take over if they can. I'll leave a few as bait for the midges, but otherwise, I'm trying to get some nicer ones instead.

 This beauty I got a few years ago. I can't remember the name right now, but the blooms are HUGE and just gorgeous! I love this one. (So far, no midges in this one --yay!)

 This was one from a bag of roots I'd gotten several years ago from Costco. It's supposed 

to be "Think Pink" but it's peach coloured, not pink! Gah! 

I've divided it in the years since, so I have two of this one.

 I have no idea where I got this one -- it's a dwarf day lily, with the same flower shape 

as the Tawny.

 This gorgeous one is one that I started from seed that I won in a seed-swap group. The seeds had been donated by a member who breeds day lilies for a living. Lucky me! 

I started with 2 that sprouted, and I've anxiously awaited them blooming to see what I ended up with... they both flowered for the first time in 2017! I love this one!

 Another shot of the beautiful red one. It is just stunning.

 This is the second one that I grew from seed. It also flowered for the first time in 2017. They are both in a temporary location, in my veggie garden, but I would like to yank out a tawny day lily or two and replace them with these. They're just fabulous!

I hope you enjoyed this post -- if you did, please pass the link around to your friends, especially those with day lilies! We've gotta stick together if we're going to at least keep the midges in check. Thank you for reading my posts! :)