NOTES ON HYBRIDIZING

 New beds for older daylily varieties are being planned. Some daylilies are still in pots, but they will be moved very soon. I will also move some daylilies from other spots elsewhere in the garden, so they will be gathered only in one area.  Recently I saw a few hems with late blooms and made a couple of photos: Darla Anita, Unknown, Persian Ruby, Seedling, Pink Titan.  

Finally, some luck with the rescue of my lavender seedling. It took root well. I can’t believe, it was just a tiny piece of root left after a severe vole attack. Now it is a small round bush, producing buds and fragrant blooms. Another seedling blooming now is a weird one - it comes from an unusual cross Blue for You x Cl. Schneewittchen. I admit, it was was rather a spontaneous decision to cross those two. This seedling is the only one from that cross to bloom. At least, so far. Nothing special though, considering its odd juvenile bloom, but I think I will wait to see it developed a bit further. Anyway, I like the veining on its petals. And it has a distinct fragrance.

All my 50 rootstocks were budded. Finally, I finished everything yesterday.  So, now it is only waiting and hoping that they ‚take‘.  All buds come from my own promising seedlings.

 It is always difficult: 1) to cull 2) to be able to see a potential in a seedling which can‘t grow well on own root, but may turn out to be very valuable if budded. However, there are many seedlings which can be culled without making any difficult considerations, for example, like this one: Because it i) looks too much like its seed parent, ii) despite its good health has nothing special about it, including its very ‚ordinary‘ pink colors, which can be found in hundreds of similar roses, iii) and above all it has a bit unformal bloom shape, too odd, if compared to its seed parent, which has a perfectly formed bloom; and, in my view, it would be a nightmare of a breeder to create just a bad copy of an existing variety.  Another seedling I am still thinking about culling it is this one, but here it is difficult and I am still not sure: This one has some small foliage issues, but one can see that it may have difficulties in growing on own root, so here it is exactly the case whe...

There has been a lot of really hot days recently. I was only able to water my critical plants (that means those planted last year). Of course, I am still monitoring my seedlings, how they are doing in heat, how they are performing and how clean is their foliage towards the end of summer. Perfectly clean seedlings: This one is budded. It is a seedling from 2023/24. Clair Marshall x Zeitgeist I have to propagate it. It’s also very hardy. My older seedling with Arethusa pollen. Own root. In propagation. Grossherzogin Luise x Golden Celebration.  Own root. In propagation.  

 I decided to include this seedling into my budding program. It is Gräfin Diana x Mustead Wood.  Maybe, it did not show the best foliage last year, but its blooms, blooming frequency, prolific blooming and great fragrance impressed me very much.

 First roses and first hemerocallis seeds are here! And off we go, straight into the fridge.

 Yesterday we cleaned the hem beds and a big rose seedling bed, despite terrible heat. I started rearranging my earlier hem seedlings in the big bed to make space for hems propagation.  I took some photos of my rose seedlings: Latein (Penny Lane x Novalis), in propagation Signum (Olivia x Großherzogin Luise)  Claire Marshall x Zeitgeist (my own seedling) Druide (Ashley x Blue for You) Startklar (Chateau de Cheverny x Arethusa) Penny Lane x Bright Eyes

 Yes, that‘s right. A couple of years ago I got some pollen for hybridizing from a once–blooming rambler and used it on some of my roses which I keep at home in pots. One of the seed parents was ‚Penny Lane‘. I have to add, that I also used my own seedling ‚Korallermeer‘ as a seed parent with that pollen. Anyway, no one of my seed parents, except for Penny Lane, was able to produce a recurrent blooming kid from that pollen, apart from this very seedling I am going to show now. Here it is: Seedling Now, these are its parents: 1) Penny Lane, a repeat–blooming climber And 2) its pollen parent, an unknown rambler: This seedling is fragrant. It shows blooms in clusters of 6–7 blooms and produces longer canes, so it may grow either to a climber or to a groundcover rose. I do not have spare rootstocks to graft it this year (due to a long list of fixed candidates), however I am going to propagate it in the nearest future. 

 Managing my hem seedlings from 2023/24. They haven’t bloomed yet. The aim was to reduce 4 rows to 2 rows. So, the smallest and “not so good looking” seedlings were removed, and the rest was rearranged in two rows.  The emptied area will get an addition from the left. This entire bed will be cleaned, covered with fiber and must be ready for grafted seedlings to come next year. These are the seedlings I am grafting right now. There must be about 40 of them. It is some kind of backup of my best seedlings from previous years.  Pic. 1. The rows on the left are being emptied Pic. 2. The bed must be enlarged like this

 There are about 50 rootstocks this time, sitting in big containers, waiting for grafting. I keep them at home and I plan to make my buddings quite comfortably, while sitting on a chair, unlike I made them last year (directly in my test field, standing on my knees on the ground, having severe pain in my troublesome back). So, I am also hoping for a better outcome this time. However, I noticed that a gall wasp has been working with my rootstocks as well. I am wondering, how it could find them at all, in the middle of a big, noisy city. And it obviously prefered Canina inermis, since all my other roses stand positively intact. Of course, these hairy things do not disturb me at all, I will prune my rootstocks anyway, right before I make graftings. I also got a nice surprise: one of my spontaneous lavender seedlings bloomed very beautifully. It has very big blooms (for lavender), and they have such pretty colors. This seedling is really special, and I want to propagate it, while I am s...

 I am a bit sad to see an approaching end of hybridizations in my daylilies. The season is over, so the ripening of the pods is another step. I hope, I can harvest enough seeds from the so called ‚interesting‘ crosses. Since there are many other crosses, which are, kind of ‚less important‘, and can serve as a backup. But we will see… Jeweled for Royalty