How to Preserve an Easter Lily

Video Transcript

"Hi this is Yolanda Vanveen and in this segment we are going to talk about how to preserve an Easter Lily. Now Easter Lilies are so beautiful and they smell so good and you always get them at Easter time and then they bloom and then they die and you think you killed it and then you throw them away. Well why throw them away when you can save the plant. Because an Easter Lily is just a Trumpet Lily. It is not that different from a Star Gazer Lily or other lilies that come up and bloom every Summer so instead of throwing it away just throw it in the garden. Now Easter Lilies are very hardy. They can survive -30 degrees. They will grow in Alaska but if you live in a really warm climate where it doesn't get cold at all then the best thing that you can do for them is just throw them outside, let them survive all Summer, just water them as they are and then in the Fall dig them up and throw them in the refrigerator for two to three months and give them a Winter time and then throw them back outside to bloom the next year, but if you live in a climate where you get any type of a cold temperature in the Winter they will come back on their own. So you just plant the Lily bulb about three inches deep in full sun or part shade and use good composted material and you want to give them good organic material so that they have something to grow in to. You can grow them in a pot or right into the ground it makes no difference. Water them really well but let them dry out in between because they will rot if they are too wet. So you can plant Easter Lilies pretty much any time of the year outside. They'll bloom every Summer naturally. They only bloom at Easter time because they are forced to bloom in the green house. They just have a heated green house and they'll just grow naturally, they think it is Summer. So if you throw them out in the ground they will just come up naturally and bloom every Summer for you, die back in the Fall, stay dormant and come back year after year after year and you can enjoy them from Easter forever."