By DOUG GRAVES
Ohio Correspondent

LEBANON, Ohio — Friends told him to stay in the restaurant business, but Dan Bachman of Lebanon left his diner in Deer Park, near Cincinnati, for a shot at growing daylilies.

“It was a hobby I started in 1984, “ said Bachman. “Believe it or not, things just snowballed and I began selling them part-time.”
In the mid-1990s work with the daylilies was so successful that Bachman and his wife, Jackie, started a mail order business. In 1997 the couple purchased 12 acres in eastern Warren County and replaced a hay field with a thousand varieties of daylilies.
“This land was first a hay field, then a dairy farm, and once supported wine grapes,” he said.

By 2001 he was involved with daylilies full-time and called his farm Valley of the Daylilies.

“I learned by researching and found out there were many different varieties and a variety of colors,” he said. “The good thing about these plants is they get bigger and bigger every year.”

To this day, the couple tend to more than 3,200 varieties of daylilies, starting out each season with an astonishing 20,000 seedlings.

“Babe Ruth hit more than 700 home runs, but he didn’t hit one out of the park with each at-bat,” Bachman said. “Only one percent will become adult plants. And like breeding anything else, you have to cull out the ones that aren’t exceptional until you get a few that you can register and put a name to.”

Work at the restaurant required his presence seven days a week. Ditto for the daylilies, he said, which sees a peak season in early July.

“I’m on my feet all day long and during blooming season I’m here all the time,” he said. “We breed daylilies and we have to be here during the pollination process.”

The Bachmans are members of the American Hemerocallis Society (AHS). The AHS is a nonprofit organization created exclusively for educational and scientific purposes, and especially to promote, encourage and foster the development and improvement of the genus Hemerocallis and public interest therein.

The word “Hemerocallis” is derived from two Greek words meaning “beauty” and “day,” referring to the fact that each flower lasts only one day. To make up for this, there are many flower buds on each daylily flower stalk, and many stalks in each clump of plants, so, the flowering period of a clump is usually several weeks long. Many cultivars have more than one flowering period.

Valley of the Daylilies was among the stops in the recent, second annual Southwestern Ohio Hybridizers Group of Northern Mecca Tour. The tour involved six hybridizing gardens around the Dayton-Lebanon area in Ohio.

“We encourage visitors during bloom season, as we have not only the commercial growing field but an AHS garden with several thousand Bachman seedlings on their maiden bloom for 2008,” Bachman said.

Valley of the Daylilies is located at 1850 S. State Route 123 in Lebanon. The Bachmans can be reached at 513-934-1273, or by e-mail at valleydan@gmbarqmail.com and their website is www.valleyofthedaylilies.com