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Each bloom season gets us excited about the direction of our hybridizing program.  Many times our planned crosses do not go as planned but some surprises keep us going in new directions.  The flowers below are some that we intend to breed with in the next few years.

Seedling 3-3.  This first bloomed last year and we observed it was a great color.  This year we were able to observe it in a garden setting and found it has dormant foliage and scapes with 20 buds and a couple laterals.  These two features are critical to produce high performance daylilies.  The parents are Born to Run x 809-3.  Seedling 809-3 will be an introduction in a year or two and is proving to be a great parent.  Seedling 3-3 is shown below:

Seedling 102-2 is from New Paradigm but the eye pattern is broken up.  We found this unique and will cross this with others in our program to hopefully enhance this unique look. 

Our diploid program will be enhanced this year with new seedlings to cross into our older seedlings.  This flower stood out on a tall scape that we could see 100 feet away due to the large green throat.  The flower is 6.5 inches with the green throat 4 inches in diameter.  It is the green throat that makes this visible across the yard.  We will use this on our future introduction 739-2 (to be named Arno’s Bow Tie) to enhance the size and flat opening. 

Seedling 908-3 is out of Spring of Living Water (our 2011 indroduction).  The blue eye and similar pattern on the sepals is great looking and the clump is showing excellent scapes this year.  It is evergreen but has done well here for the last 3 seasons.  We will still work with this in hopes of getting dormancy in it but we hope to load it up with pods from Blue Desire, Bit of Blue, and some of our Blue Hippo seedlings. 

Today was te first day that we had nice seedlings that did not hve New Paradigm as a parent.  Apparently New Paradigm breeds for early season bloomers. 

Seedling 105-1 is from 836-2 x 924-11.  Both seedling parents have our own Ancient of Days as one parent which resulted in this new seedling having a clear color and white edge.  We could see this one from across the garden.

Seedling 106-1 – Blue Desire x 912-10.  This seedling is much larger than Blue Desire and the pollen parent is dormant.

Seedling 103-3 is New Paradigm x 719-4.  See post about Bird of Prey to get information about 719-4.

Seedling 109-1 is from our diploid program.  Parents are 802-5 x Kermits Scream.  Seedling is more green than Kermits Scream.

Our local daylily club – Bay Area Daylily Buds (BAD Buds) is hosting the Region 2 regional meeting in 2014.  I volunteered (again) to be chairman of the meeting.  Our club did this in 2004 and enjoyed it so we are doing it again. 

Luel and I considered introducing a flower that would have the same name as our theme for the regional meeting.  We hope to be able to grow enough to have every family attending get a fan as a gift plant.  We identified a seedling last year that was excellent quality.   It had 8 fans.  We hope to double it every year as follows:

2010 – 8 fans

2011 – 16 fans

2012 – 32 fans

2013 – 64 fans

2014 – 128 fans

This will be just about enough for most people to get a plant at our regional meeting.  If it grows faster, great.  Duane and Barbara Nickel from our Milwaukee connection are growing it for me and hopefully it will multiply faster way down south.  I kept one fan in garden and the scape looks great although it will not bloom for another 10 days or so.  The parentage is (August Wedding x JT Davis) x Heir to the Throne.  We counted 30 inches high, 24 buds, 5.5 inches in diameter.  Foliage is hard dormant.  Picture is below:

Bird of Prey (2011 introduction – Heavens Proclaim x (Monterrey Jack x Clarification) started blooming in the warm microclimate next to our house on the south side.  This is a much better garden plant than its parent – Heavens Proclaim.  Bird of Prey is taller, better branched, a hardy dormant, and more vigorous.   We will see our first seedlings from it this year but intend to hybridize with it again this year.  The picture does not do it justice – the flower is 7″ in size and quite showy as a clump. 

The pollen parent of Bird of Prey was a dormant seedling out of Monterrey Jack x Clarification.  The seedling flower was large but not fancy so we used it as a bridge plant.  In addition to Bird of Prey, we will likely introduce seedling 719-4 this  year which is Jamaican Love x (Monterrey Jack x Clarification).  Seedling 719-4 is also dormant with the same tall well branched scape.  I think the scapes are coming from the Monterrey Jack x Clarification seedling.  Photos of Bird of Prey, 719-4 and scapes from both are shown below.

Today was the real start of the daylily season for us.  We had our first seedlings open yesterday but today we had a seedling that was nice enough to mark as a keeper.  When we mark them, we give it a number, photograph the seedling, and put a flexible plastic around the scape with the number on it and the cross.  This years seedling crop will start with the number 100 so this first seedling is 100-1.  The pod parent is a seedling that first bloomeed in 2007 – that has a number of 715-1 ((Monterrey Jack x Cherokee Pass) x (Unending Melody x Sabine Baur)).  This is a nice dormant seedling but was not fancy enough to be a registration.  However, we expect several introductions out of it based on seedlings from last year and the large number of seedlings we will see this year.  Seedling 100-1 is (715-1 x New Paradigm).  We like the round form and fat sepals.

We also had an older named daylily bloom called Zoe Josephine.  It also is out of Monterrey Jack with Dan Mahony being the pod parent.  It has an especially nice edge on it. 

 

As of today – July 1, we have not had any plants that overwintered 2 years here bloom.  We did get some bloom from a new Florida plant (Ted’s Tribute to Linda) and from seedling 990-2 that was in the basement in 2009-2010.  Our basement plants typically do not bloom the summer after they bloomed in winter.  But we often get an early bloom the following year.  That is what happened with 990-2.  This seedling is a cross of Petit’s “April LaQuinta” by our 2011 introduction “Blown Away”.  It is a large polychrome and was lavishly ruffled the last couple days. 

We expect our first year seedlings to start this weekend and peak garden bloom in late July. 

Our northern hybridizing program focuses on breeding hardy plants that will survive winters here.  For us that means dormant foliage.  We often hear that dormant and hardy are not the same.  Our experience with northern dormant plants is that they are absolutely hardy.  Some evergreens are hardy here but many are not.  Some daylilies from down south are listed as dormant but do not perform as dormants here.   These have not all been hardy.  An example is Stamile’s Nordic Mist.  This plant was introduced a long time ago (1999) but I remembered buying it because it was dormant.  It never behaved as a dormant and died during one of our harsh winters.  I think that is why we hear people saying not all dormants are hardy.  We have never seen any hardiness issues with our own dormant plants. 

Luel and I check plant habit every spring.  Each numbered seedling is evaluated each spring.  We do this in April when the foliage is just emerging.  Most plants are easily identified as dormant or evergreen.  A few are somewhere in between and we will list them as semi-evergreen.  Even dormant plants behave differently.  August Bride goes completely underground and emerges in spring.  August Wedding always has one leaf that stays above ground but the new growth comes from a dormant bud under the ground.

Melanie Mason once told me that many plants are now difficult to tell if they are dormant or not.  I think she is right because of the genetics of evergreens and dormants are mixed together.  Regardless, we will continue to hybridize using one of our basic rules – “At least one parent should be dormant”. 

The photos below show 2010 seedlings we are evaluating.  Seedling 832-2 is a complex seedling involving Magic Amethyst, Tupac Amaru, Filled to Overflowing, and Heartbeat of Heaven.  The foliage is evergreen.  We crossed it with our 2011 dormant introduction – One Foundation.  Seedling 14-4 is listed as dormant and seedling 14-1 is listed as evergreen.  This is clear in the April photo but hard to distinguish in June.  Both plants are 3 fans but the dormant plant is a little more vigorous. 

Growing daylilies in northeast Wisconsin and shipping around the country is a constant challenge.  We started our business of selling our introductions in 2005.  That year we sold our first introductions  in late summer.  The plants were large and as big as the ones we got in spring from Florida.  However, most customers prefer their plants in spring. 

In 2006, we began shipping our introductions in spring.  We would select plants for introduction in the previous summer, divide the plants and line them out as single fans.  We shipped the largest plants we could but new introductions were often single fans. 

As our hybridizing program became more mature, we had more seedlings to select from for potential introduction.  In 2009, we lined out potential introductions in fall and evaluated them in 2010.  The plants we ended up introducing had many plants lined out to be large plants in spring 2011.  As a result, we were able to ship almost all of our introductions as double fans. 

In summer of 2010, we again lined out potential introductions.  With our high moisture spring, the plants are growing well and will be large plants when we select for introductions and get ready to ship in spring 2012. 

We are excited about sending out larger plants and our customers have indicated their pleasure with the plants we shipped this spring.  The photo below shows plants ready for shipment this spring.  Althout the foliage is immature, the roots are large and the daylilies should adapt well and be ready to grow well this year. 

As we move into early summer, we have looked back at a wild spring weather.  It began in late March with a 15 inch snow storm followed by a cold spell.  The snow melted in April along with more than 8.5 inches of precipitation (rain and snow combined).  We had water standing in areas that never had water before.  The weather was also cool and windy.

May was cool but normal precipitation.  June started nice but we got into another rainy spell with 9.0 inches of rain from June 15 through June 23.  Another stretch of standing water in the yard.   The temperatures in that period were in the 60’s for high temperatures.  We refused to put the heat on in the house even though it was quite cool.  Daylilies are way behind in bloom season but the wet weather should make them grow well.  Below are pictures from April snow storms and the result of June rains:

June 23 flooded garden bed.

April 3 snow cover

April 19 snow

Each  year we have several plants from other hybridizers that we purchase for adding different genetics to our hybridizing program.  In the last 2 years we bought 6 – 10 plants each year for  hybridizing.  Some of the plants are:

Fringy, Shamrock Dew, Kings Solomon’s Treasure, Magical Marrakesh  – Stamile

Dovealicious and Force to be Reckoned With – Nicole Harry

Velvet Throne – Petit

Venus Fly Trap – Gossard

Kings Solomons Treasure – Holmes

Briar Patch – Grace

This winter, Magical Marrakesh, Shamrock Dew, and Dovealicious did well in the basement.  Briar Patch grew OK but was typically blotchy.  Velvet Throne was new this fall and did send up a scape – the first two flowers so far have been narrow without an edge.  I hope the flowers look better when the plant is bigger.  Below is a picture seedling 78-1, Magical Marrakesh, and 23-3.  The two seedlings are at least as nice as Magical Marrakesh. 

Just as I do not judge seedlings in the basement, the same is true for named cultivars.  Some plants struggle with the bloom cycle in the basement and don’t bloom in the basement or the following summer.  Some look different until the plants get larger and bloom outside.