Current Newsletter

Fall/Winter Newsletter - 2010

The summer of 2010 was early, warm, humid, and had record rainfall. We will remember it for the unbearable mosquitoes as well. Unlike 2009, night time temperatures were quite warm due to the high humidity. The daylilies grew well, and we were able to make a lot of seeds during the bloom season.

The star parents of the newest seedlings included One Foundation – a 2011 introduction. This parent gave us some of the largest edges we have seen in the garden in colors of lavender, red, and burgundy. Other star parents included Heman (Gossard 2008) (lots of seedlings with nice edges and better petal color than Heman), 809-3 (a clear purple seedling from Ancient of Days), and 800-7 (an extremely ruffled Heir to the Throne seedling).

The great 2009 year class gave us a chance to view and hybridize with many nice seedlings. Some of the best were blue eyed seedlings out of Cerulean Warbler, Blue Hippo, and our own Grace Like Rain and Arnold’s Daughter. Other blue eyed seedlings came from our T. Lavender Blue Baby and Destined to See. We compare our plants with notable blue eyed introductions such as Blue Hippo and Blue Desire and our Pinewood introductions and seedlings do not take a back seat to any of those “blue” eyed daylilies. The 2009 seedlings also showed us improvement in overall flower size with some plants routinely 7 to 8 inches. The rainfall helped but our other plants were normal sized so we know the genetics we incorporate to increase our flower size is also involved. We have yet to see seedlings from the gigantic Pinewood Only Imagine (2010 introduction) so we will just have to imagine until 2011 bloom season to see how that plant impacts our hybridizing. In darker colors seedlings from Song of the Redeemed – a 2011 introduction were particularly stunning and Ancient of Days showed many dark seedlings with clear colors.

Our 2010 introductions put on a great show in the garden. Everyone commented on Pinewood Only Imagine – you cannot ignore this 9 inch giant with clear pink color on tall scapes. It is easily visible across the garden. Snow Day had gorgeous ruffled cream flowers during a long bloom season. Sawtooth Predator had a lot of flowers and the warm weather made it toothier that previous years. We again set a lot of seed on Sawtooth Predator and will see a lot of seedlings the next 2 years. Rooted in Love put on a great show as did New Covenant. Pinewood Easter Morning is a late bloomer that had awesome scapes and wonderful flowers well into August.

We have worked to provide better sized plants for our customers. Most of the 2011 introductions were lined out in spring rather than fall and should be large plants when shipped in spring 2011. Most of our potential 2012 introductions are also lined out and we feel confident we can continue this system resulting in more and larger plants for our customers.