I had a wonderful day too!!
I made it home just fine, thankfully. When I got home, I couldn't get to the pc without pushing Sara out of the chair. [I managed to nudge her aside long enough to see that the Lakers won yesterday. It's he(( to have 2 passions that conflict with my schedule...
] She looked like she was there for the long haul.
And she was still in front of it when I called it quits & went to bed last nite... I didn't have the time or the coherence to post anything this morning. LOL
It was so good to see everybody again!!
All the Pella group & Gary and Kathy & Gary's sister, Nancy. And as always it was so much fun to give Marlys crap.
7 months since the last time I had a chance to do that - too long. LOL And I met another forum member - Jeff/allnitro - for the 1st time so that was
It's always good to be able to put a face with a screen name.
Jeff brought some of his seedlings and so did Trudy. Theirs were all good sized - some with scapes already.
And Gary brought a bunch of his seedlings for the taking too. Some w/red petioles & some w/streaks. Thanks, Gary!!
The talks with photos that Gary and Trudy and Greg Johnson gave were each interesting & a lot of fun. 3 different approaches. But each works for them.
Greg Johnson has been hybridizing for 20 years. He said that he got good advice when he started from Herb Benedict and Russ O'Harra. I enjoyed hearing his thoughts on what he hopes to achieve with various crosses. Several of the blue hostas he's introduced weren't a lot different from others on the market, but the significant difference was their fast growth rates. Some crosses turn out the way he'd hoped while others yielded some unexpected results. One example was crossing 2 plants with white flowers and getting a dark lavender flowered offspring.
[Can't remember the parents or the plant he mentioned now.] Unlike Marlys, I didn't take any notes yesterday. She made some remark about not needing to with my photographic memory.....and as you can already see I don't have one. LOL But that brings me to the sister seedling of Tequila Sunrise that I can't recall the name of either.
It has a more ovate shaped leaf that's also rippled and has white undersides like TS.
Very appealing hosta to me
& I would think a lot of other people as well. He said it was in some gardens, but it has never been put into TC.
He also showed several sports that have occurred in his garden from crosses he made. One that looks really interesting with a lot of potential is a sport of the streaked version of Moonlight Sonata. It's a creamy yellow centered plant that he's still waiting to stabilize - it's still has a somewhat streaky center on some leaves. Another interesting story he related was about the cross that resulted in Everlasting Love and Topaz. He'd been hoping to get a blue leaved plant with yellow margins, but he didn't quite get what he wanted even though he got 2 nice plants that were both released for sale. But now 20 years after that cross, Bob Axmear had Topaz sport with a yellow edge. It's called 'Waukon Thin Ice' and is available this year from Naylor Creek. Greg said Bob's plant is what he'd hoped for originally & now he has it. Just not the way he expected.
He also showed a number of his newer plants that are currently in TC at Q&Z or will be in the next few years. And I believe one of his plants is in production at Walters Gardens. C.H. Falstaad had seen it in his garden in 2000 & kept asking him when he was going to do something with it. One of the new ones in TC looks very similar to Bridegroom which someone mentioned. There is a key difference though - Greg's plant is 3 feet tall and about 4 feet across.
I definitely need that one when it's available!!
He had a handout that he had available is for potential hosta breeders. It lists a number of different traits to breed for so that you can have a clearer picture of what you hope to achieve with different crosses for individual plants and a breeding program. Again my memory is bad & I don't remember what he said the parents of a cross were. But he expected to get certain characteristics from the cross - and didn't. I'm pretty sure that I would have just heaved them onto the compost pile. But he didn't - he crossed them with each other the next year. And the traits that resulted from those crosses were what he'd orginally been expecting to see from the original cross. So you never quite know what you'll get from crosses even if you think you do. And not that I'd ever advocate keeping every green seedling, but he did say that Bob Solberg pulled what he named One Man's Treasure out of Dr. Herb Benedict's compost pile.
All in all it was a wonderful hosta day!!!
As my daughter says:
It's good for you to be among your own kind.
Is that what they're calling that discussion we had after a meeting once last year or the year before?? 
I thought somebody should since it was just a week away now. Well if you're not there, then I guess I'll have to go outside of my comfort zone and find another table to sit at. 
doesn't !
And you are aquainted with Greg & Gary all ready too so it will be easy & fun! When you talk about something you're passionate about, it's not hard at all. Just tell us your sdlg stories. 
