Each year, Luel and I prepare a spreadsheet with all of our seed crosses on it. This allows us to see which crosses we may have an abundance of and not plant all the seeds. This year we harvested over 6600 seeds and have room in the garden for about 3600 seedlings. Some seeds will not be planted in order for us to limit the number of seedlings.Â
Seeing I am an engineer, I like to look at the statistics.Â
Number one pod parent – seedling 809-3 had 34 pods and 286 seeds harvested. That is from one 3 year old clump. This is a future introduction and had scapes averaging over 30 buds each. Obviously pod fertile. 809-3 is a cross of Ancient of Days x (Joan Derifield x T. Lavender Blue Baby). Great genetics in this plant and we have already seen excellent seedlings from it.Â
Other stats of interest – we had over 870 crosses. This is higher than last year and shows we have a lot of variety in the types of crosses we made.Â
Of other hybridizers named plants, the most common parent was King Solomon’s Treasure, Venus Fly Trap, Kingdom Without End, Velvet Throne, Shamrock Dew, Get Jiggy, Gnashing of Teeth for tets, and Cosmic Kaliedoscope and Nikki Schmith for dips.Â
A high percentage this year came from new seedlings where we would pick out the best flowers from the day and spread the pollen around on older pod parents. We do not try to set pods on new seedlings.Â
Luel does all the planting here and she is targeting beginning to plant the seeds after February 16.Â