Oh, hail!

I had been thinking that it would be good to cut off the scapes of all of the named varieties in the garden this year so they would look extra special for the national convention in July of 2013. Scapes have come up a couple of weeks earlier this year than normal because of the warm spring so hadn't yet gotten around to doing it. Last Sunday night a huge hail storm took care of it all at once,   decapitating scapes and making 5-way branching into 2-way or no-way. Here are some pics of the scapes all dinged up and decapitated, and the leaves shredded. Nothing I can do about it, so no point being stressed. Just glad no tours here this year. Many plants still haven't sent up scapes, so the season won't be a total loss. But for many plants in their last stages of evaluation, they will just have to sit there another year to get accurate statistics.

Oh my, being a hybridizer is a lot of work!

All but about 150 of the 2012 seedlings have been taken out of the greenhouse and sent outside for further evaluation (I planted about 5400 seeds). I will keep the 150 inside for one more year to make crosses on. Yes, they are untested, but their genes are hardy, so I think it is worth the risk. Pods are in buckets of water, waiting to ripen. The tree frogs are finding it harder and harder to find places to sun themselves, but they will find a home a bed or two away in the intros I am leaving inside. We finished moving the seedlings out June 15, a record for us - probably because I eliminated about 35-40% of them before they went outside. Becasue of earlier planting last year (June 1) I was able to see a very large percentage of them bloom, and eliminated all that didn't make me smile. In order to do that in the future, I would need to hold back some of the seeds and not plant them on my normal August 1 date. Might choose to do that this year on half of them so there aren't so many to move out next year, as we will be really busy getting ready for the national.