April 4 seedlings - saturated color and ruffles

This is the first seedling (1312) that I have seen out of 8110, the luscious grape seedling with the white pattern that looked like a fleur-de-lis some days and a sequoia tree other days. Although not patterned, it is a 7 inch beauty with 4 way branching.

Pictured below is 0412. Very tall with 5 way branching. An advantage of planting 3 months earlier than normal for this year's seedling crop has been the ability of many of them to develop better scapes than I normally see on first year seedlings. Of course, this is just in the greenhouse, and outside is the place that counts. The other pictures are 0512, 0912 and 1012. Pretty enough to eat, but not possible because of all of the bug spray that is needed to keep the chompers from completely taken over. Despite the pesticides, the greenhouse is full of small pale green frogs that love to sun themselves on the leaves and in the blossoms.

Oh, happy day - the season has started:-)

I've been watching the huge bud on this new seedling (0212) for several days with great anticipation. This is a new color for me. I haven't used many reds, as it has been hard to find the fancy edges on them that I like. I finally decided it was worth a try, using my fancy edges that go back to Heartbeat of Heaven. It is out of 5006 (second picture below) and It is Finished. 5006 has lots of interesting things in it, including Man of Sorrows, Rock of Salvation (which is giving it the thick substance and form), Way of Life, Heartbeat of Heaven, Regal Majesty, Clothed in Glory, and even Light of the World.




Another seedling I liked today is 0310 (below), which is out of the 2 seedlings pictured below it. Long parentage on each, that includes grandkids of Chariot of Clouds and 47607 (which is the fourth picture below - fabulous parent for all kinds of looks - seems like it will go with anything - and looking really pretty today).

Day of Reckoning (below) was also showing off the lovely pattern on its sepals.

Anyone got a machete???

This is the greenhouse today, March 14. Pretty soon I may need a machete to get through the aisles:-) The picture below was taken February 12 (same aisle, same spot)- quite a change in just a month!


Only a handful of plants are blooming now (all future intros - no seedlings yet - only starting to see the beginnings of scapes). The pic below is the first bloom of 47607, and below that a bud of it that will bloom tomorrow. Have better pics of it, but excited to see its first bloom.

The season begins:-)

After giving the greenhouse a month of chill time in December (min temps at 35 and max at 50 - would love to take it 10 degrees colder, but below freezing temps inside impact the structural integrity of the greenhouse and freeze the pipes), it is now time to take up the temps and begin the new season:-) A couple of hours ago I increased the minimum temp to 50 degrees and will be setting it higher in coming weeks.

This year the greenhouse includes a little more than 5000 sdlgs (see earlier blog posts for what I planted), past intros plus those for 2012 and 2013 (including the gift plants for the 2013 national convention) and some for 2014. I brought in only a handful of other "mama" plants, as I wanted to leave all my sdlgs outside for testing and thought it would be a great test to use one of my proven intros in each cross to improve hardiness. But I did bring in a lot of pollen from special seedlings:-)

You will notice a lot of green flags - I use those to tell me where my white marker tags are, indicating each cross. There are lots of flags, as I like to do short crosses (usually 3-5 seeds of each). Many of the seedlings are already blooming size - it really helped to plant them June 1 - a couple of months earlier than usual. I'm hoping to see a much larger percentage of bloom.

The next picture shows the different types of foliage of my introductions. It is hard in Minnesota in the spring to figure that out sometimes since it is so cold and the snow leaves so late. And there are lots of sdlgs to keep track of. But the differences are obvious in the GH - the yellow in the foreground is a dormant, and the one next to it is an Ev or Sev - it is very hard to tell the difference.

The picture below shows sdlgs where there is a lot of dormancy - the pollen parent is the same in this whole bed (while I don't do long crosses, I do make big bets on pollen parents, using them on many pod parents)

Some genetics produce mostly Ev and Sev seedlings, as in the picture below. I have found many of them to be just as tough as the dormants.

2012 Introductions

The new introductions for 2012 are now on-line at springwoodgardens.com/daylilies.html. There are multiple pictures of each one, plus pictures of their offspring.I'm really excited to be back in the swing of things and love this collection. Large, colorful flowers. Lots of teeth. Lots of great genetics for hybridizers. Everything is on-line, but feel free to e-mail me at springwoodgarden@aol.com if you'd like a pdf of the catalogue.

Back to normal:-)

What a difference a year can make. I finally feel like I have my life back:-) Take a look at the September 14, 2010 post (just type in empty in the search box and it will come up) when the greenhouse was completely empty and the one from June 2011, after I had just finished planting my seeds. The greenhouse is now basically full again - I had vowed never to do that again, but just couldn't resist. After all, it costs the same to heat and fertilize no matter how many plants are in there. I'll probably regret it in the spring, when I pull out all of the seedlings for outside testing. Note the size of the seedlings! A number have already sent up baby scapes (in just 3-1/2 months), so hopefully I will get terrific bloom next spring. I normally plant the seeds in early August and am lucky if I see 35-50% bloom. The rest of the plants are the 2012 intros and most of the ones for 2013, including almost all of the gift plants for national. Will soon be posting pics of the new intros, and then over the winter, the best things I saw this past summer.

New seeds planted

Finished planting 5100 seeds on June 13. Hoping by planting this early that I will see a bigger percentage of bloom next spring. But that will depend on sun, genetics, etc.