Pinewood Gardens

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.