Off and on topic

Dahlias?
You will know things are truly bad off when I start putting up pictures of daylilies and roses.
To get us back on topic – since it can take 5 years to get from new cross to bloom, does anyone have any advice for an amateur hybridizer?
Mike Kuduk Cold, cold Winchester KY

9 comments for “Off and on topic

  1. Michael,
    In order to have something new blooming each year after the inital five years of waiting is make sure that you make crosses every year.  If you do so, you can expect maiden blooms to appear every year.
    Ted

    Theodore E. Snazelle, Ph.D.

    101 Water Oaks Drive

    Clinton MS 39056-9733

  2. One more piece of advise, plant seeds for five years in a row, and after you wait for five years, you will have another five years of “new blooms” and in my case I have been planting new seed for at least twice that long.  After the pipeline starts, it just keeps giving.

    clay

    Clay Higgins
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  3. Mike, another tip I’ve been given is to use the information on DaffSeek regarding fertility. I’ve started highlighting all the fertile daffs in my database so I can try some of those every year, plus a few wild and crazy crosses. ;-> I had my first 2 blooms from some miniatures last year. If you like miniatures, they can bloom sooner from seed than standards, so you might get a few earlier blooms that way. My seed beds are not in the best location and it was 5 years before those first miniatures bloomed.
    Becky Fox Matthews that daffy girl near Nashville, TN (it’s snowing again or should I say still)

  4. Clay and all,
    Bill Bender was the one who told me that when I started.  Right you are!
    Donna

  5. Hi all,
    I would try pollen on everything. Their is always a chance for the unreduced gamete. If the seed looks flat, plant it anyway. You may see something wonderful and maybe not. 
    Marilynn

  6. Becky,
    Remember that only those cultivars that have had something registered with it as a parent are noted as fertile.  Most daffodils are, except for some that are triploids, for example.
    Make crosses and if they take, note them in your records as fertile, too.  The majority of the crosses I have made over the years were not with ones noted as fertile in the record books.
    Donna

  7. No Advice of my own, but Brian Duncan seems to keep immaculate records of everything he crosses. John Hunter seems to research the parents and grandparents of each of his crosses. Harold Koopowitz uses beautiful species which no one else seems to have used before.
    As Donna implies- get some seeds planted sooner rather than later
    John Beck

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