Author: Korth

Our breeding program does not focus on teeth but we have toothy plants going back many generations and we are seeing more dramatic toothy seedlings each year.  The back bone of our toothy plants is Cast Your Crown introduced in 2009.  This plant goes back to pollen graciously given to us by Karol Emmerich from one of her tender purple toothy seedlings out of Fortune’s Dearest.  When the pollen set seeds on Forestlake Ragamuffin, we were fortunate enough to get a dormant red flower with gold teeth.  The first generation of seedlings from Cast Your Crown bloomed in 2006.  The grandkids from Cast Your Crown bloomed in 2011 and 2012.  Below are some of the toothy seedlings we will be evaluating.  Seedling 183-1  is (Cast Your Crown x Alpha Male) x Heman.  It is dormant and in 2012 started blooming in late June.

Seedling 183-1

Seedling 225-4 and 225-6 are the same cross and is (Cast Your Crown x Tears for Gus) x Lady Stephanie Victoria Redding.  These richly colored seedlings exhibited nice teeth and we spread the pollen around the garden in 2012.

Seedling 225-4

Seedling 225-6

Seedling 216-3 was a large and showy plant.   The pod parent is our 2013 introduction James Davenport and the pollen parent is a Heman seedling we are still evaluating.  The result is a bright flower showier than either parent. 

Seedling 216-3

These early toothy seedlings that bloomed in late June and early July are important to us as we can use the pollen on pod parents all through July. 

 

 

Our first diploid introduction – Arno’s Bow Tie – was our best seller from our 2012 introductions.  It is an early/midseason bloomer and began the last week in June in 2012.  It is our first introduction of our breeding line for larger green throats.  The picture below was taken on June 30 and we already had pods set on it. 

  Arno’s Bow Tie

Arno’s Bow Tie is a good pod setter and we made seeds with it in 2009 with pollen from Emerald Starburst and Kermit’s Scream.  We were pleased with the results when we saw them bloom in 2011.  Below are two seedlings that bloomed for the second year in 2012 and both bloomed in late June (about the same time that Arno’s Bow Tie did). 

Seedling 115-2 (Arno’s Bow Tie x Emerald Starburst)

This seedling kept the nice round shape of Arno’s Bow Tie but has a richer color and dramatic bitone look. 

Seedling 115-4 (Arno’s Bow Tie x Kermit’s Scream)

This is our favorite Arno’s Bow Tie seedling.  The bitone sepals rarely display any blush of red and the large green throat covers over half the flower.  This is Luel’s favorite diploid and it stands out in the garden.  Every diploid seedling that bloomed set at least a couple pods so we should have a large crop of new diploid seedlings in 2014.

Continuing on with our bloom season, in late June we started to see our “blue” eyed seedlings begin to bloom.  One early group was second bloom year seedlings from Blue Desire.  Blue Desire is a Gossard introduction out of T. Crystal Blue Persuasion.  While listed at 4.75″, it does not bloom larger than 4″ in our garden.  Our seedlings have shown increased size.  The first picture below shows Blue Desire on the right and seedling 106-1 on the left.

 Seedling 106-1 on left – Blue Desire on right.

Seedling 106-2 bloomed well in 2012 with flowers about 5″ in size. 

106-2 (Blue Desire x Grace Like Rain Seedling)

We are using these Blue Desire seedlings with our dormant seedlings that go back to our original blue eyed breeding stock based on Destined to See and T. Lavender Blue Baby.  Seedling 947-1 is an important bridge plant providing dormant genetics that open well. 

Seedling 947-1

Finally, in late June, we had a new seedling bloom that came from our “blue” program.  Seedling 229-1 is from:

(((Tet. Lavender Blue Baby x Destined to See) x Spring of Living Water) x ((Grace Like Rain x T. Lavender Blue Baby seedling) x Cerulean Warbler). 

Seedling 229-1

We are not sure where the teeth came from as none of the parents exhibited teeth.  The color was great and the white teeth set this seedling apart from others.  We used the pollen from this seedling on many crosses.  Hopefully many took and we will see seedlings from this plant in 2014.

 

The first named daylilies bloomed in a warmer microclimate on the south side of our house.  This area gets warm first and early bloomers bloom extra early in this location.  Some of the bloomers in the last week of June were:

Bird of Prey

This dormant plant has been popular with my customers including some in Europe that appreciate the large size, easy opening, and clear color.  The above photo was taken June 22.

Snow Day

Snow Day Scape

We had a nice clump of Snow Day (2010 introduction) that bloomed profusely early in the season.  The plants had nice scapes with well over 20 buds on each.  The scape above shows 5 terminal clusters.  We typically see 5 buds on a cluster giving us about 25 flowers on this scape.  While Snow Day is not white, the cream/yellow flower is perfectly formed and ruffled each and is an excellent garden plant for us.

Narrow Road – Photo taken 6-21-12

Narrow Scape

Narrow Road was a 2008 introduction for us.  It has been sold out for several years.  In the summer of 2012, we had a smaller clump blooming along the house.  With the high bud count and large clear flowers, customers ordered it and we sold out in one day.  It will be 2014 before this is available again.  It is a dormant red spider variant with tall, sturdy scapes that hold up the numerous flowers.  Outstanding garden plant.  We were unable to set pods with Narrow Road but pollen works.  There may be a few daylily sellers that have this one – get it if you can. 

Beauty By the Bay

This flower was registered by Pinewood Gardens in 2011 but has not appeared on our website.  We are holding this for the Region 2 2014 meeting and hope to have all attendees take one home with them.  This is a great dormant plant with excellent scapes.  The color is more pink than Snow Day and features both August Wedding and Heir to the Throne in the breeding background.  Hope many will join us in Wisconsin in 2014.

 

Now that fall has set in, we can look back at the last summer’s bloom season.  We had daylilies begin blooming around June 20 – about 2 weeks ahead of normal.  The first seedlings to bloom were older seedlings that first bloomed in 2011.  The cross for all these seedlings is New Paradigm x Swallowtail Butterfly.  New Paradigm is a Floyd Cove introduction with Tet. Terry Lyniger in the background.  It is a very early bloomer and is shown below:

Swallowtail Butterfly is also an early bloomer and when combined with New Paradigm, we got many nice seedlings.  All these seedlings started to bloom in the garden setting beginning between June 20 and June 24. 

Seedling 103-3 above

Seedling 103-5

Seedling 103-6

These seedlings are nice sized and will be among the earliest bloomers every year.  We will evaluate these for the next several years.  This year we set seeds on them from Waldo Gone Wild and Mackenzie’s Magic among others. 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is it the start of the bloom season but I want to show how we plant the seedlings.  After starting them in the basement, we moved the seedlings outside in early May to harden off, then to plant.  Luel does all the planting, while I till the planter boxes.  All are planted in raised beds that are 6′ x 8′.  This is an easy size to build and maintain as we can mulch and weed these boxes without walking in them. 

Seedlings are planted in rows 8 inches apart and each seedling is planted 6 inches apart in the row.  We get 13 rows and 12 seedlings in each row for the typical box. 

Above picture is seedlings being introduced to daylight and wind after growing in the basement. 

Here is Luel taking apart the seedlings in the pot before she plants them. 

Above is seedlings with roots after being removed from pot. 

These are typical seedlings before planting. 

Above shows newly planted seedlings.  The first seedlings got more weather shock and all their foliage died back.  It regrew later and now they look like the newer seedlings that were planted when it was warmer and never had foliage die off. 

I will finish mulching all the seedling beds this week to keep weeds down and reduce watering requirements.  We use chopped leaves from last fall stored in bags for the last 8 months. 

 

 

Scapes have appeared this warm weekend – May 28.  This will be the earliest bloom season we have had.  August Wedding is one of our earlier bloomers and our garden clump has several scapes already.  August Wedding flower and clump today are shown below:

August Wedding (2005 introduction – Magic Amethyst x Forsyth Comanche)

August Wedding clump with scapes on May 28.

August Wedding has been the parent or grandparent of more than 12 of our introductions.  We still intend to breed with it again this year.  We have new pollen from Ted’s Tribute to Linda and Even Heroes Bleed from Ted Petit and My Dream of Heaven from Larry Grace that we have not used yet.  August Wedding is a good opener and often makes dormant kids so we find it is still valuable for breeding.  Below are two seedlings from the 2011 crop with Fringy being the pollen parent.  Both are dormant and we are looking forward to seeing them bloom again this year.  We also should see August Wedding x King Solomon’s Treasure in 2012. 

Seedling 1003-1 (August Wedding x Fringy)

Seedling 1003-3 (August Wedding x Fringy)

We have seen seedlings from some of our local daylily club members (Shelly Wiggins and Mary Jo Tilton) who have used August Wedding and it has been excellent for them. 

We have not sold August Wedding for several years to build up stock.  All we have is the one clump by the house.  We will divide it next spring and have it for sale in 2013.  If anyone needs to but it, I believe Melanie Mason has some for sale.  It has been excellent for both garden and hybridizing. 

 

 

 

 

 

Pinewood Gardens always looks for new introductions from other hybridizers that bring new genetics into the world of daylily hybridizing.  Dan Trimmer is one of our favorite hybridizers for the tet conversions he does and includes in his breeding program.  In 2005, we ordered Bill Vojir and Jamaican Love from Dan.  Bill Vojir has Tet. Pink Elation as a parent and Jamaican Love has Tet. Devils Footprint as a parent.  Bill Vojir gave us One Foundation which is proving to be an excellent garden flower and superior breeder.  Jamaican Love gave us two introductions in 2012 – Imprint Your Image and Swallowtail Butterfly.  We also purchased Parrot Jungle from Dan in 2005 but were unable to get many seeds from that plant and none of the seedlings were worthy of introduction.  Overall, a good percentage of good breeding plants from Dan that year. 

Jamaican Love is an evergreen but we were able to get two dormant introductions from it.  Imprint Your Image is our most popular tetraploid this year inspite of the low bud count.  The other parent is our own Heavens Proclaim.  While both parents are evergreen, we were fortunate to get a dormant from this cross and are very happy about it.  We have been slow to hybridize with it but some some seedlings and will continue to use this plant for its pattern and dormant genetics

Swallowtail Butterfly is another dormant from Jamaican Love with a dormant seedling (Monterrey Jack x Clarification) as the pollen parent.  This plant is a wonderful garden plant with scapes that are well branched and budded.  We also were more successful in hybridizing with this flower and have several potential introductions from it.  Even more important to our program is a good portion of the seedlings from Swallowtail Butterfly are dormant which will help our patterned eye program.  Some of the seedlings that are dormant that we look forward to breeding with this summer are shown below:

Seedling 166-3 (Swallowtail Butterfly x Heaven’s Proclaim seedling)

Seedling 166-4 – Swallowtail Butterfly x Entwined in the Vine

 

 

 

Luel and I worked hard to develop a unique line of purple daylilies.  It started with Tears For Gus and Ancient of Days.  These plants had clear white edges and clear purple colors.  These were both evergreen daylilies and did not always appreciate our winters.   The genetics of Ancient of Days included Mary Lightfine, Lake Effect, Janet Benz, and Spacecoast Surprise Purple – a nice mix of dormant, evergreen, and 4 different hybridizing programs. 

 

Seedling 809-3 – Lydia’s Cloth

One of the best offspring from Ancient of Days is seedling 809-3.  This has a seedling pod parent 274-1 (Joan Derifield x T. Lavender Blue Baby) that is dormant with a nice scape and color but was a little plain for us to introduce.  Seedling 809-3 (274-1 x Ancient of Days) has a much fancier white edge than the pod parent, a clearer purple color but retains the dormant plant habits.  One great trait is the flowers are rarely blemished which is great for such a dark color.  Bud count was average in 2010 but as a clump in 2011, we had bud counts that averaged 35 buds on 40″ scapes.  We have reserved the name Lydia’s Cloth for this flower and will introduce it in 2013.  We set 35 pods on this clump last year collecting over 280 seeds.  We love the color of Lydia’s Cloth and the dormant plant habit along with the high bud count.  It has a white edge but not as large as some of our other introductions.  Again, the genetics are unique with 4 hybridizing programs from Ancient of Days and 2 new programs from seedling 274-1 (Jack Carpenter and Curt Hanson).  This unique blend of genetics is now our own line and is the workhorse of our purple breeding program. 

With the great genetics from both parents, we look forward to many great seedlings from Lydia’s Cloth.  We already have a likely introduction from a cross with Heartbeat of Heaven (30-3) and another clear cherry red from a cross with Born to Run (3-3). 

 

Seedling 30-3

 

Seedling 3-3

 

Wow, the weather here is warm just like almost everyone else in USA.  Normal temperatures are in the mid 30’s but we are in 60’s and 70’s.  This week the snow melted and we have been able to begin work in the garden.  The spring peepers are out in force the last few nights.  We love this sound in spring. 

We physically inspected each un-named seedling last weekend and gave it a foliage category;  Dormant, evergreen, semi-evergreen.  This is not an easy task as many are somewhat in between these categories.  There are dormants that are below ground yet – those are easy to distinguish.  There are also ones we consider dormant because all the new growth is from underground buds although there is a little green above ground.  We also look at the foliage above ground.  Evergreens are soft and mushy this time of year.  The more dormant plants that have some above ground foliage are hard, green, and undamaged from the winter.  The plants in between are given semi-evergreen status.  We take a status check every year and some plants get a different designation than the previous  year. 

We also inspected some of our southern evergreens we had hoped to use for breeding.  We mulched the plants in late fall with a couple of inches of multch around the plant base leaving the foliage sticking out.  Then in early winter, we put some evergreen boughs over the top.  Even with the mild winter, some plants looked awful this spring.  Attached are some pictures of named plants in our garden this weekend. 

 Bird of Prey – Dormant

Heavens Proclaim – evergreen but looks OK

Briar Patch – evergreen but looks mushy after the mild winter.  Hopefully it will come back.