Trim the leaves back & plant now, I cut mine back to about 4-5" & plant them. Don't hold them til fall, they almost certainly wouldn't bloom next spring.

i was sort of wondering the same thing...but more of a long term situation. is it possible to dig them up some and store them over the winter? i have a massive bed that needs to not only be dug and divided...but is completely overgrown with weeds and tree saplings. the previous property owners planted a ton of iris and daffodils right along a fence row. couldnt get the mower in there during mowing season, and i assume they never weed-wacked it due to all the flowers they had in there. so after many years it is more weeds than anything. but its huge and has to have thousands of bulbs and rhizomes! we are wanting to completely get rid of this bed and go back to a clean fence line. but we know that this will be a huge undertaking, as well as the many other projects we have going on right now. we can get them all dug up, but do not think we will be able to replant them all by the time the winter comes. has anyone else had any experience with storing them long term like this? im guessing we should just hold off and continue looking at the eyesore until next year.

Charlotte, you said to let y'all know what I decided to do. Well, I got some manpower to help so I took advantage and dug up entire garden. HAD TO, due to invasive ginger lilies taking over in back. And as I'd said, all lily bulbs were already out. Or so I thought. Once we started ammending soil, we found even MORE Â again HUGE with lots of roots. Once I break them all up IÂm sure IÂll have over 100+. NO WAY am I going to try to repot all those so am thinking of just replanting them now. Question 1 ÂHostaholic said they are never really dormant so have I harmed the ones I pulled out before by letting they lay for couple weeks in dry, shaded area? They still look fine. IÂm letting the stalks die back naturally on the ones I pulled too early, others are just bulbs with roots, then some smaller ones (corms?) Have I killed any of them by waiting too long? Question 2 - Most of the big bulbs have nice root system. Not going to be able to plant ALL of them, so which is better for planting now? Dividing the big ones or using smaller bulbs but with no roots or does it matter? Question 3 Â Do you just slice them in 1/2 or 1/4's leaving on some root? What about the pieces that fall off that look like artichoke leaves? Will they grow? Question 4 Â Can you interplant in between lilies? Trying to compensate for when theyÂre done blooming but you still have stalks. Need something that can compete with the shade the lily foliage creates. Something that might start blooming late summer into fall? And preferably something tall? (IÂm also going to post this one as a separate question since it doesnÂt really belong here. But like the feedback IÂm getting from yÂall HERE :o) Thanks everyone! Bonnie

That fork may not be nearly as old as you think it is. Technically speaking, that is a "Hay fork". Hay forks are lightweight and have two or three long slender tines with a rounded backing and they are primarily used for handling loose hay, straw or corn fodder as opposed to a "manure fork" which would have 4 or 5 tines and a square backing that you can put your foot against for heavier digging in the same manner as using a shovel when cleaning barns and stables. While I have found some references to that type of fork as early as 1833, they can still be purchased new at any agricultural supply store today. I was born in 1947 and grew up on a 200 acre family dairy farm in N.E. Ohio where we still farmed the old ways with horses and horse drawn equipment. As a boy on the farm learning to drive a team of draft horses and mastering the use of forks was a right of passage. We would begin making hay & cutting and threshing grain in mid June and the little boys had to go berry picking with the women and the girls, but once you had demonstrated that you could drive a team of horses and had mastered the use of a fork you could go to the fields with the men. I personally began driving a team of horses and pulling wagons to and from the fields the summer before I began school in the first grade. Although I was still a bit too small to handle a fork for loading wagons, by that time I was quite adept at using a fork to carry straw from the two 40' high straw stacks behind the barn into the cow stable, then using the fork to shake out straw to bed the cows for the night. In regards to how your fork may have ended up underground, I can think of two possibilities. 1. You say that this was found on the edge of your garden plot. On our farm we would occasionally use a Scythe to cut the grass and weeds on the edges of the garden plot, then use a fork to carry the cuttings to the hog lot, or sometimes pile it up to be burned when dry. It is possible that it was used in that manner and for reasons unknown it was inadvertently left out. 2. It is quite possible that a young boy, such as myself, had taken the fork out there on the pretext of imitating the men, and as is common to boys everywhere, once the fun wore off, if was just left lying wherever.