Author: Korth

Luel planted over 5000 seeds at the end of February.  Since we are not blooming plants in the basement this year, we are using the big 1000 W HPS lights for growing the seedlings.  The seedlings seem to love it and should be quite big by the end of April when we can take them outside. 

Here is Luel planting seeds in our 4″ square pots that are 5″ deep.  Here the seeds are planted and stay until we take them outside and put them into the garden.  We can fit up to 16 seeds per pot.  We put 1 or 2 crosses into a pot and Luel has a system to keep them separate when they are taken out for planting. 

Here are seeds in various stages of sprouting.  Aren’t they cute?

Above is a look at the final planting.  25 trays with 18 pots per tray.  We can get 200 seeds in each tray so there are about 5000 seeds in the trays.  We plant 3500 seedlings or so in the garden each summer.

 

 

 

This problem of flowers with edges that hang up and prevent opening was originally confined to southern breeders.  As northern edges got larger, this problem also showed up in our large edged plants. 

Our first seedlings from Natalie Grace showed an interesting development.  Many of these seedlings had some of the largest edges we had ever seen, yet did not hang up on each other.  We looked at the flower and found that the flower tips did not have ruffles on them. 

To verify this observation, Ted Petit at the Region 2 symposium said the same thing.  He breeds for large edge with a notch at the tip to prevent the tips from hanging up.  It was nice to hear the southern breeders figured out the same thing we had.  Below are pictures of Natalie Grace (named for our granddaughter) and two Natalie Grace seedlings.  Both have huge edges but are notched at the tip and open well. 

Natalie Grace (2009 introduction)

961-3 – Natalie Grace Seedling

900-8 – Natalie Grace x Blown Away – 1 inch wide ruffles

We have used 961-3 extensively and it has been a great breeder for large edges that open well.  We will continue to watch for large edged flowers with a notch at the tip to continue to work for edges that do not hang up.

Heaven’s Throne is one of our 2012 introductions.  We purchased Heartbeat of Heaven in 2005 from Karol Emmerich and as promised, it was a great breeder.  With Heartbeat of Heaven being an evergreen, we crossed it with our best dormant seedlings.  The best one we had in 2005 was one that became Heir to the Throne.  When we observed new seedlings in 2007, one of that cross was Heaven’s Throne.  We began hybridzing with it the next winter and are still using it as a parent. 

Heaven’s Throne captured the color and watermark from Heartbeat of Heaven and the dormant habit from Heir to the Throne.  It was one big clump in the spring of 2011 and we lined it out early.  All the single fans ended up blooming and had scapes with several laterals and bud counts over 20.  This behavior led us to introduce it this year. 

As a parent, we did not get much from Heaven’s Throne in 2009 because it bloomed late in the basement and did not make many seeds.  In the summer of 2009, it bloomed outside for the second time and we put lots of pollen on its flowers.  As a result, we had many seedlings from it that bloomed in 2011.  (We get 2 years bloom from pollination to outdoor bloom).  Last summer we marked 18 seedlings for further evaluation that had Heaven’s Throne as a parent.  What we saw in the seedlings was a dramatically larger edge in many cases with clear colors and good opening characteristics.  We believe some of these will be future introductions.  Some good ones are below:

Seedling 1014-1

Seedling 198-5

 

Seedling 198-8

Heaven’s Throne looks to be a powerhouse breeder and already is a fine garden plant.

 

Rocks Cry Out was introduced in 2009 and has been one of our best sellers.  It is a great garden flower with tall well branched and budded scapes.  Dormant and hardy here,it also sets pods and continues to be a good hybridizing plant for us.  We photographed it in the summer of 2011 and it looks better than ever.  We also saw kids from RCO out of Heman, 915-2 (a Red Friday seedling) and 924-23 (Heartbeat of Heaven x Song of the Redeemed).  Several of these kids could be introductions. 

Rocks Cry Out

Seedling 121-1 (Rocks Cry Out by Red Friday Seedling) – Much rounder form than RCO

 

Seedling 121-7 (Rocks Cry Out x Heman)

Seedling 121-9 (Rocks Cry Out x 924-23)

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. 

Seeing I am an engineer, I like to look at the statistics. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

Luel does all the planting here and she is targeting beginning to plant the seeds after February 16. 

 

 

December 24, 2011 – Merry Christmas to all.

Each year at Christmas time I like to look at pictures of red (Christmas color) daylilies from last summer and pick out a few of the best. Here are my picks from summer 2011.

Rocks Cry Out – variable color but on cooler days, a good red color.  2009 introduction and excellent parent for reds. 

Rocks Cry Out seedling 121-1 – Nicely round and ruffled. 

Seedling 121-5 – full sib to above 121-1 with clear red color. 

Potential introduction out of Born to Run – seedling 959-3. 

Red seedling 184-3 with violet tones.  We like the watermark and edge.

Seedling 171-1 – (809-3 x Born to Run) – clear cherry red with white edge.

Cast Your Crown seedling 133-1.  Great color with gold toothy edge.

Diploid seedling – large green throat and nice clear red petals.

Born to Run seedling 3-10.  Nice bitone with gold toothy edge. 

 

 

 

We introduced three daylilies from the cross of Northern Dawn x Treasure of the Southwest.  Northern Treasure was the first one we hybridized with.  The others, Forever Rosemary and Gentle on My Mind are later bloomers and did not work as well with our hybridizing.  The first generation of seedlings from Northern Treasure were crossed with Leslie Renee and Shores of Time.  We got nice pinks but never ended up introducing any.  This year we saw second generation seedlings and more first generation seedlings from Northern Treasure and were quite pleased. 

Seedling 1015-1 below combines a Northern Treasure seedling with a Heartbeat of Heaven Seedling.  The color comes from Northern Treasure with the edge from HOH. 

Seedling 177-7 is a Northern Treasure seedling x a Gary Colby seedling.  Nice clear color compared to Gary Colby.

 

Seedling 191-1 is a Northern Treasure seedling x the fabulous 924-23 – a Heartbeat of Heaven kid. 

 

Northern Treasure crossed with Fringy gave us many nice seedlings.  Here is one of them.

Todays post looks at some of the Pinewood Daylilies and how they look this year.  We had one of those great daylily days on Wednesday.  Cool, overcast, light rain – the daylilies looked good all day so I took a lot of pictures.  Here are some of the recent Pinewood daylilies and how they looked.

Blown Away (Korth 2011) has been awesome in the garden.  Many visitors are drawn to it with the vibrant colors and huge edge.

Forever Rosemary is all about color.  We sold out today because of the wonderful color. 

 

Song of the Redeemed is a stunning deep red/violet flower with fancy white edge.  Great breeder, it is sure to stop traffice when it looks like this.

 

Spring of Living Water is a lovely flower but this year it is all about the scapes.  Huge scapes with 30 plus buds have 3-4 flowers on a regular basis with flowers held apart from each other. 

 

Sawtooth Predator has been “toothier” than some years and is a cool look to the garden.

 

I had to work today while Luel did all the work.  She took pictures of some nice purples with white edges in the new seedling beds and did some hybridizing with them.  When we first started hybridizing, I wanted to work with purples and add edges.  Starting with Strutter’s Ball, we tried working with a variety of purples with mixed success.  We had a breakthrough with our Tears for Gus getting white edging into our program.  Ancient of Days followed with more success.  The subsequent generations added dormancy and combining with Heartbeat of Heaven gave wider petals.  The results are many stunning seedlings we could not have imagined 10 years ago.  Here are three seedlings from today.

Seedling 124-6 ((Cooler by the Lake x Heartbeat of Heaven)x(924-23 – Heartbeat of Heaven x Song of the Redeemed)) is out of our premiere seedling 924-23.  See earlier post for photo of 924-23.  Great color and huge white edge on this flower.

Seedling 141-7  – Cooler by the Lake x (814-13 – Ancient of Days x Rolling Stone).  This seedling is all from our own breeding program and we liked the ruffled white edge.

Seedling 172-4 is a toothy edged seedling that is also bitone.  Luel crossed this with 2 nicely budded dormant seedlings that are also bitone.  Parents are 933-16 ((Heir to the Throne x Hearbeat of Heaven x Ancient of Days) x Briar Patch.

This time of year, Luel and I walk through the new seedling beds looking for new flowers to hybridize on our older named plants and older seedlings.  We like walking around with the flowers and think how the new seedling would combine with existing flowers.  Here are a few of the nice new seedlings we hybridized with.

Seedling 172-2 ((Heir to the Throne x Heartbeat of Heaven)xAncient of Days)x Briar Patch.

Seedling 1015-2 (Northern Treasure x Shores of Time) x (Heartbeat of Heaven x ((Forestlake Ragamuffin x Upon This Rock)x Leslie Renee)).

Luel likes painting with blue eyed things and her results have bee excellent.  Here are a couple seedlings she used today.  Seedling 169-3 involves Grace Like Rain and Blue Hippo and an older Clarification seedling.  The large eye and edge give the flower almost a completely (daylily) blue look. 

Another seedling involving Grace Like Rain, Blue Hippo and a Spring of Living Water seedling – 146-2.