My first attempt at hybridizing

[marriedtomud]

LOL Jane

Surely you jest .... is there a pic limit? If there is it's the first I'm hearing of it. I've never had any problem posting as many pics as I need/want to.
I thought it was eight pics .... nine would have been pushing the envelope a bit.

Oh ... on the hybridizing front ....
Thunderbolt and Small Sum had great pollen this morning.
Unfortunately SS got checked after most of the crosses were done. The pollen was collected and SS was used for the fragrant nitetime crosses with FGT, RS & newl;y opened Iron Gate Delight. They'll both get a lot of use for tomorrow mornings crosses. SS is showing pods forming on his first two flowers.

Fragrant Blue is near the finish line for flowering. Two of his scapes were very fertile while the other two were spotty with takes. So far there are 57 pods formed, The known pods thus far with FB are from crosses made with ....
Montana Aureomarginata, Guardian Angel, Bright Lights, Kabitan, August Moon, Salute, Whirlwind, Christmas Tree, Touch of Class, Striptease, Halycon, Inniswood, Fried green Tomatos, June, Bullseye, Wogon Gold, Maraschino Cherry, Frances Williams Seedling, Yellow Splash Rim, & Selved.
There were a dozen attempts with Misty Gold pollen on FB but none took. Also several with Elvis Lives with no takes. This was mostly during the high heat of summer. One thing I noticed with MG pollen was that it seemed to have better results if cured for a few days before using. I'll be trying that same apporach with a few of the other non fertiles in future.

There were single pods found tonite on Scooter, the Island Charm sport, & the Blue seedling. Unfortunately the cross markings were unreadable. I'm reasonably sure each was with Bullseye but not 100% sure so they be listed as Open Pollinated. The Blue Seedling was pollen fertile but pod barren until the heat broke. In cooler weather he's much more pod fertile.

Hopefully a bit more time in the garden this weekend.

Curtis/m2m

Lancifolia first scape .... all takes except Misty Gold ... I'll be trying again tomorrow with older pollen. Crossed with Striptease, Bullseye, Fragrant Blue, Blue Seedling, Kabitan,
Whirlwind, Wogon Gold, Salute, & Yellow Splash Rim.


Fragrant flower pics

Plantagenia


Royal Standard


Fried Green Tomatos


Iron Gate Delight


Bub's Gift (RS Seedling)

[wishiwere]

Yes dear, there was a 3 pic limit, I thought at least there was. Now I'm wondering if it was just for me, cause I like to post too much!

Love your fragrant flower pics! Great!

[marriedtomud]

Look what I found in the garden tonite ....


Breeder's Choice ... two scapes


Paradeise Red Delight ... one scape


Fire Island ... three scapes


Sun Power baby division ... tweo scapes


The hybridizing season just got extended.
Three of these divisions from earlier this spring are in pots already so can easily be brought indoors. Sun Power is planted but is small and can easily be dug and potted to be brought indoors also. Sun Power was one of the very first to flower this spring ... and now may also be the last.

The garden walk showed Bub's Gift (a Royal Standard seedling with large fragrant white flowers) to be fertile as a pod parent. He's taken crosses with everything this week except the saved pollen of Seventh Heaven. He has pods forming with Fragrant Blue, Halycon, Kabitan, Bullseye, Paradise Joyce, and was crossed today with Striptease and Plantagenia (who had ripe pale yellow pollen today).

Iron Gate Delight hasn't made any pods yet. Tomorrow he gets Kabitan pollen ... K seems to take with everything.

Curtis/m2m

[Dee_dla]

Curtis, I am so enjoying your posts and seeing your pics! I am learning so much from you and others as they post of their hybridizing adventures. It will be so much fun to see the resulting babies from your crosses.

I just picked the one splitting OP pod from my Spilt Milk and there are lots of OP pods on others in my garden. The Korean Snow I got from Josh in July is sending up the teeniest little scapes I have ever seen. I wonder if anything else will be available for a cross when she's ready. You've made me wish so!

Thank you for the inspiration!!!

[marriedtomud]

Hi Dee

It makes me happy that you're enjoying this post so much.
Quite a few have emailed me privately to ask questions or say how much they like the pics ... it helps to know that
others are finding these posts useful or fun. Thanks for thaking the time to post a nice commentary. I too am looking forward to harvest and eventuallyy the seed sowing. Like Jim said a long time ago ... thats when the real fun begins.

Tonite I got one of the most pleasant of suprises. About
ten days ago I tried some Seventh Heaven pollen that I had saved (and aged) on five Hostas. Two anthers ... five Hostas and they all took. Salute (3 pods), Fragrant Blue, Fried Green Tomatos, Thunderbolt (2 pods), & Red Dragon all have pods forming from that cross. Red Dragon actually had a pod ... I almost couldn't believe it.
Tonite I used another anther and was able to cross another five ... 2 Bub's Gift, Iron Gate Delight, June, Royal Standard, & Tenryu got crossed. There are only two anthers of SH left and I'd like to save one for next spring.

I did inventory and remarked the pods on Salute tonite.
He has pods forming with Halycon, Bullseys, Kabitan, Thunderbolt, Misty Gold, Seventh Heaven, Wogon Gold, Fragrant Blue, an unknown green dwarf, and a pod from the first cross with Plantagenia. There are also four pods that were formed from OP during the last rain. After a rough start when the weather was really hot he's since shown to be a very fertile pod parent.

Curtis/m2m

Another fragrant is about to flower ... Guacamole.

[Mary Ann]

Curtis, I'm enjoying this thread so much. Who ever thought it would go to 84 replies, and still going.

Jane, there is a 3 picture limit if your images are coming directly from your hard drive, however, Curtis is using Photobucket, so those limits don't apply.

[wishiwere]

Thanks for the reasoning Mary Ann. I've heard of photobucket, but I'll have to google it to see what's it all about

[marriedtomud]

Thanks Mary Ann

I'm enjoying hearing from everyone as well.
You might well be amazed at the amount of emails I've been receiving
about an interest in hybridizing.

I don't claim to be an expert but it really isn't that difficult.
You don't have to collect the seeds or keep records unless you want to.
The crossing itself takes only a few minutes.
The pods can be left to form and drop their seeds for self planting. I'm actually looking
forwords to the winter sowing. With 6 months of winter in Michigan it can help to keep
the spirit of gardening going.

This was my first Sat at home in a while and a great chance to do some good hybridizing.
Lots of fragrants in bloom ... the Sun Power baby made a first flower ... Fire Island
had his first also. El Nino opened a few days ago and made good pollen ....

And it's raining.

I'll do some crosses between bouts of rain anyway. Last weekend it rained and
the majority of the crosses took.

Plantagenia pollen from his first flower took with several crosses. Inniswood, Fragrant Blue,
Tenryu, & Salute showed pods forming with his pollen.

FGT has lots of large pods forming now and several flowers at once opening on each scape.
His flowers were open early this morning ... like Plantagenia was earlier.

Lachman's pods are getting huge. And they're all different colors ... from very
streaky to very dark green.

Curtis/m2m

Fire island first flower


Fried Green Tomatos flowers this morning


FGT pods


Sun Power baby flower


Tenryu X Plantagenia pods forming


Fragrant Blue ... last flower crossed with Plantagenia


Love this pod ... Revolution X Kabitan


The down side of Hybridizing. A single pod on Bright Lights for an entire season. The other scape has one pod also.

[Jamie]

Curtis,
Great to see your having a ball doing some crosses and hopefully you'll get some nice seedlings.. Great Pics by the way

[marriedtomud]

Hey Jamie

Thanks for the good wishes. The Maraschino Cherry I got from you was used in rotation for the several flowers that he made. He has about 10 pods and one is from Misty Gold ... keeping my fingers crossed for that one. If you do have an extra eye of your wonderful Gunther to divide off next spring keep me in mind if you would.

Between bouts of rain I was back outside this afternoon.
Suprisingly a lot of the flowers were already 'covered' with
pollen. Almost every flower on over a dozen scapes of Lancifolia had been pollinated by the bees.

A few additional suprises to be found though.
Kabitan is back. There were three new scapes showing rapid new growth and flower buds on a potted division. Thats his third time this season making scapes.

Red October & Camelot are also sending up first scapes.
Stained Glass made a first flower.

I check daily for the ripening of the really early ones ... Sun Power, Spilt Milk, Frances Williams, the Tokudamas, Elegans, Blue River, Sagae, and QOTS. None showing splitting pods yet but they can't be too far away.

Curtis/m2m

Red October scape forming


Kabitan ... new scapes


Camelot scape forming


Stained Glass flower


Guacamole flower


One of the most suprising performers here was this tiny start of Wogon Gold. He made only a few flowers but his pollen was used successfully with dozens of crosses. He's also pod fertile.

This baby Wogon Gold


has these big pods

[marriedtomud]

Who would have thougth that at this late stage in the season that new scapes would still be forming. I was really excited to find scapes on Fire Island, Sun Power,
Breeder's Choice, & Paradise Red Delight when they started to form two weeks ago. El Nino made a late scape a week later. Kabitan sent out three additional scapes yesterday .... Camelot & Red October showed first scapes ... and tonite there were two more showing first scapes. These two were totally unexpected.

Two baby starts .... Marilyn Monroe & High Kicker .... have new scapes forming.

Both these Hostas have white backs and ruffled edging
but are not similar in appearance. Research on MM didn't reveal if this is a regular flower time or not. Same with HK.

It rained steadily this morning and there was spotty time for early hybridizing so Sun Power & Fire Island got heavy usage for pollen tonite. El Nino was used a bit also. Guacamole had great pollen tonite and got crossed with a lot of the other fragrants. Sun Power & Fire Island will both get at least one cross with Guac pollen tomorrow morning.

The nite crossing fragrants are increasing in number daily. A new Plantagenia and another Royal Standard showed first flowers tonite. There were 23 scapes with over 30 flowers
open tonite. FGT, IGD, Guac, Stained Glass, Plantagenia, Royal Stanfdard, & Bub's Gift were all open at once. Late
afternoon crosses are a lot easie to do than in the early mornings now. With the shorter days the sun is barely up by 6:30.

Curtis/m2m

Oh ... Fragrant Blue decided to make one last flower. There
is a single flower bud forming three days after the last one
was crossed with Plantagenia. Which one should be used for pollen?

New scapes ....

Marilyn Monroe


High Licker


Last flower on Fragrant Blue


New flowers on Plantagenia

[John]

I like the sound of High Licker...

[marriedtomud]

OOPS!

It was a typo ... I swear.

Curtis/m2m

[marriedtomud]

Seeds!

Sagae jumped way ahead of the earlier bloomers and
had a pod ripen tonite. It was split on the scape but no seeds had fallen out. I was expecting the first one with seeds to be Queen of the Seas or Spilt Milk ... maybe even Frances Williams ... but Sagae won out. These seeds are Open Pollinated .... I wish I could say that this was one that I had hybridized but Sagae had just finished up with flowering when I started.

There was about two dozen ripe seeds in this single pod.

I thought it a little bit odd that the pod that ripened first wasn't one of the lower (earliest formed) pods on the scape. It was about two thirds of the way to the top so it
was a much later cross. Do different Hostas have longer/shorter time frames for seed ripening?

It's been raining here for almost a week. Last nites rain was fairly heavy and it was still raining early this morning
so not many crosses were done. Fragrant Blue held off on opening his last flower .... thankfully.

Sun Power had four flowers open today on the two small
scapes and Plantagenia had exellent bright yellow pollen. This Plantagenia opens in the early morning rather than at nite. Both were used heavily for pollen donors. Stained Glass had good pollen this afternoon so will get used tomorrow morning.

Curtis/m2m

Plantagenia X Sun Power ... excellent pollen even with all the rain


Sagae Seeds

[marriedtomud]

It was cold in the gardens this morning!
Fifty Nine degrees at 5:30 and I had a swetatshirt on for the first time since March. A summer cold is coming on also ... but I still wanted to make the rounds.
Got home early enough to do the late hybridizing and a little weeding with some sun still shining. Still playing catch up on re-marking the existing pods. It gives me a chance to see the pods are holding up and to review which crosses took at what time. A plant check also shows quite a few new scapes at various stages of development.

Paradise Red Delight (a single eye) has one scape with flowers about to open any minute and two additional tiny scapes just starting to form at the base. There's also another even smaller eye of PRD that has a small scape forming. Red October has five scapes forming. Kabitan has three .... one about to open a flower. Breeder's Choice has two and both may flower tomorrow. Marilyn Monroe, Camelot & and a small start of Chinese Sunrise have one scape each but are a few days from flowering. Silver Crown & Guacamole both sent up an additional scape. Lance (a Lancifolia baby) has a slew of scapes just now forming.

This could take a while yet to wind down. The scapes forming now are much smaller than the summer scapes and they don't always flower each day. Salute & Halycon finished up. I saved a little pollen from each for the late bloomers. June and Paradise Joyce are almost to their last flowers. Tenryu has just a few left to go.

Curtis/m2m

Breeder's Choice new scape about to open


Paradise Red Delight ... oddly formed scapes


Red October ... 5 scapes


Guacamole forming a new scape


Lance ... a Bonsaied Lancifolia has a bunch of new scapes

[marriedtomud]

A Saturday morning off.
I still woke at 4AM but turned over and went back to sleep for another 1/2 hour. It's was cold and the pollen doesn't form as quickly now as it did when it was warmer. Most of the open flowers have anthers that are not fully ripened. I'm using yesterday's pollen or older stored pollen and replacing it with the new pollen when it ripens a little later this morning.

Paradise Red Delight opened a flower as did Kabitan.
Sun Power got used for pollen quite a bit and got crosses with all the late bloomers & especially the fragrants like Stained Glass, Guacamole, & Plantagenia. El Nino, Fire Island, Stained Glass, Guac & June got used a lot also.
Kabitan will be in rotation again this afternoon with the fragrants.

Most of the small divisions with new scapes have only a few flowers ... PRD has nine buds in total ... El Nino has ten ... Sun Power is down to his last three buds already. Even though the divisions are small their flowers are the same size as a full grown Hosta would have ... just not as many.

June seems to be taking crosses with almost everything
now after a slow start of almost no takes at all during the high heat of Late July/early August. Her scapes are full of newly developing pods at the top yet mostly empty on the bottom with the early crosses.


Curtis/m2m

Paradise Red Delight (X Sun Power)


Kabitan rebloom (X Plantagenia)


Fire Island flower (X Stained Glass)


Stained Glass flower (X Kabitan)


Fried Green Tomatos pods


Can you guess this one ... He forms pods but they won't grow to maturity. I'm gonna use his pollen this afternoon.

[marriedtomud]

There wasn't as much activity this weekend as I had hoped.
With all day Saturday rain and a really cold Sunday the flowers have been a lot slower to open. Pollen isn't ripening in the new flowers until the sun is up a couple hours.

Sun Power finished flowering today. El Nino has one bud to go.

Breeder's Cup and Camelot appear to have a good number of buds though. Can't tell about Marilyn Monroe ... her scape gives very little away. Paradise Red Delight, Stained Glass, & Guacamolwe are all making flowers and pollen regularilly ... just a little later in the morning.

As I was opening the gate and had only one hand available the paper towel on my tray of collected pollen got caught in a breeze this morning .... I ended up with a mix of about ten different pollens. All todays crosses are designatwed with a (?). LOL ... it was pollen I was going to use but now have no clue which one was used. This could be a good thing though. There are about 30 flowers with a '?' as the cross symbol. I did actually recognize the anthers from a few. They are that distinctive. I guess you've been hybridizing too much when you can recognize which plant pollen is from by the anthers.

I'll catch up on pics soon.

Curtis/m2m

Hope everyone had a fun Holiday.
Oh ... the Hosta that won't hold pods to full fevelopment
is Krossa Regal. I can get him to take crosses and start pods. Trying to figure out why they always abort.

[marriedtomud]

The late blooming Sun Power baby seems to have been a success with pollen crosses on quite a few of the fragrants. Plantagenia, Royal Standard, Bub's Gift, Fragrant Blue, & Stained Glass have pods showing development. Lancifolia, June, and El Nino have pods forming with a SP cross also. I've a bit of his pollen saved for the next round of bloomers.

Almost nothing was showing ripe pollen really early this morning. Breeder's Choice had a flower and good pollen by the time I got home and will make the rotation tomorrow morning. Camelot looks ready to open. He's the last of the blues to bloom.

Fire Isand has aborted every pod so far but his pollen seems to be somewhat fertile. I'm hoping he's not another one like Lakeside Cah Cha. I'll try old (saved) Kabitan pollen on him tomorrow and see if it induces better fertility.

Curtis/m2m

Anyone know where I can get a Rupifraga?

[marriedtomud]

More seeds tonite! The second pod to open here
and it was a suprise also ... Blue River had a small pod from
one of his first flowers to ripen today. At the time that he was in flower there were only a few others in flower as well.
Queen of the Seas, Sagae, & Frances Williams for sure ... and possibly Sun Power. If these seeds aren't selved then it's likely one of those for pollen. They're recorded as open
pollinated (like the Sagae seeds were) but if the seedlings should show certain characteristics then I'll be able to guesstimate the pollen parent.

Breeder's Choice has two flowers to open and had excellent pollen so he was used a lot for pollen. His flowers qwere crossed with Stained Glass & Paradise red Delight. PRD, SG, & BC were the most used tonite.

One scape of Lancifolia has pods from start to finish. This
clump has about a dozen scapes that all sprouted at different times. While the first one is finishing up a newer
one has only just started. Two of the scapes have no pods at all but the rest have a few vacant spots where some crosses didn' take. Lots of no takers with Fire Island and Iron Gate Delight.

Thanks to everyone that's emailed to tell me how much they've enjoyed this thread. I'm enjoying sharing this fun experience with you.

Pics by the weekend.

Curtis/m2m

Blue River seeds .... 9.7.2006

[Dee_dla]

Wowwwwwwww, Curtis! You are going great guns still!

I'm curious....did a search and didn't see any reference to Korean Snow in your garden. Mine is flowering but I can't seem to get anything to "take". Might just be my inconvenient times of trying due to my work schedule or perhaps weather conditions. It's the only streaker I have and was so hoping for a pod or two. Still lots of flowers so I will keep trying though. Time is getting short for viability.

Anyone have pods form on Korean Snow?