Author: Phil Korth

Due to being stuck at home, I was prodded to update my blog on our website after several years on inactivity. I am starting with Ransom Paid. This flower was introduced in 2017 and is a cross of our Rooted in Love x Waldo Gone Wild. We loved the great contrast of petal and eye/edge and the plant proved to be hardy and worthy of introduction. As a parent, we will have at least three introductions from it.

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Wild About You is a 2018 introduction with Ransom Paid crossed onto a New Paradigm seedling. This is a larger flower that is eye catching in the garden. This is an early bloomer as are most of the New Paradigm kids.

In 2020, we introduced Ransom for Many. This is also a Ransom Paid x New Paradigm seedling cross. While this flower also has a large eye and edge, the edge is in three colors – purple to match the eye, lavender, then a good toothy edge. This fancy flower is also proving to be a good parent.

In 2021, we intend to introduce a third Ransom Paid kid not named yet. This is a dramatic flower with a large eye and edge than Ransom Paid. This is seedling 543-3 and it is proving to be a good parent.

When 543-3 was crossed to our Healing Waters, seedling 819-2 resulted and is spectacular. All the plants shown are dormant and hardy in our zone 4 climate which should be valuable to gardeners and breeders in northern climates.

The spring and summer has been cool and we are well behind the normal bloom season. However, we have had some early scapes blooming out of season. They are fun to see and extend the bloom season.  The first two were in the pastel range.  This is good reminder to us on how difficult it is to evaluate new seedlings and see if they are better than what we have named in the garden.  These first flowers were spectacular.

 Manna From Heaven – dormant with nice scapes

Sugar in the Morning – dormant and when it is right, it is usually one of the best flowers in the garden.

 

Each  year we have several plants from other hybridizers that we purchase for adding different genetics to our hybridizing program.  In the last 2 years we bought 6 – 10 plants each year for  hybridizing.  Some of the plants are:

Fringy, Shamrock Dew, Kings Solomon’s Treasure, Magical Marrakesh  – Stamile

Dovealicious and Force to be Reckoned With – Nicole Harry

Velvet Throne – Petit

Venus Fly Trap – Gossard

Kings Solomons Treasure – Holmes

Briar Patch – Grace

This winter, Magical Marrakesh, Shamrock Dew, and Dovealicious did well in the basement.  Briar Patch grew OK but was typically blotchy.  Velvet Throne was new this fall and did send up a scape – the first two flowers so far have been narrow without an edge.  I hope the flowers look better when the plant is bigger.  Below is a picture seedling 78-1, Magical Marrakesh, and 23-3.  The two seedlings are at least as nice as Magical Marrakesh. 

Just as I do not judge seedlings in the basement, the same is true for named cultivars.  Some plants struggle with the bloom cycle in the basement and don’t bloom in the basement or the following summer.  Some look different until the plants get larger and bloom outside. 

 

We are often asked how we come up with the numbers for our seedlings.  Numbering seedlings is probably different for each hybridizer.  There is no official way to number seedlings and AHS offers no guidelines. 

Here is what we do.  We start our numbering process over each year.  We only number first year bloom seedlings that we mark to keep a second year.  We start the numbering each year with the last number of the year.  For this  year that would be “1”.  We add 2 digits to the series to get up to 100 numbers.  The first number identifies the pod parent.  For example, if the first flower in the summer of 2011 has August Wedding as a pod parent, that flower will be 100-1.  The second flower we mark as a keeper that has August Wedding as a pod parent will be 100-2.  Every following flower with August Wedding as a pod parent will be 100-3, 100-4 and so on.  The pollen parent could be different in each flower and we write down both parents for each flower. 

The second pod parent would have a starting number of 101-1.  Every new pod parent will get a new number followed by a series of numbers for every pod parent. 

Typically, we will have 300 to 400 first year seedlings we mark.  Our numbering system works well with that number of seedlings.  If we go beyond 100 unique pod parents, we start with 4 digits with the first one being 1000-1. 

This system works well for us.  Every hybridizer should develop their own.  Anyone is welcome to use our system or modify what we do.

We will quit hybridizing in the basement tomorrow.  We usually figure at least 6 weeks from pollen dabbing to pods are ripe.  Quitting on March 7 gives us around third week of April for pods to ripen.  We then refrigerate seeds at least a couple weeks then can plant seeds by mid May.  Sprouted seedlings can go outside in garden in mid June and hopefully bloom in 2012.  We get better germination on seeds that are refrigerated longer. 

Our highlighted seedling today is 78-1.  The parentage on this one is all our own introductions.  Pod parent is (Hello Darkness x  Ancient of Days) x Song of the Redeemed.  78-1 first bloomed in 2010 and based on basement growth is dormant.  The color is rich dark red and has a heavy gold edge.  It opened well outside and in basement.  It has been a smaller flower (around 5 inch) and is smaller than any of its parents.  The color is so nice we are using it in basement and will spread pollen on some of our plants next summer as well. 

 

We brought a few named plants in the basement from other hybridizers to work with our own seedlings.  In purples, we have Magical Marrakesh (Stamile) and Briar Patch (Grace).   Magical Marrakesh has nice color and a nice edge.  Briar Patch is quite toothy but is consistently blotchy.  Many of our seedlings are consistently unblemished so using them with Briar Patch may breed out the blotchy look.  Seedling 78-1 is one of the seedlings we have used with Magical Marrakesh and Briar Patch.

The Pinewood Gardens blog is to provide updated news about Pinewood Gardens and explore other subjects related to daylilies.  This is the initial entry so I hope the information will become better as we get used to writing blog posts.

Here in late February, we are having peak bloom in the basement.   This year we cut back on basement plants because we are now able to make many thousands of seeds outside in summer.  We have about 45 plants and are setting some pods and collecting a lot of pollen to use next summer.   One of the 2010 seedlings we brought in to hybridize with is seedling 58-1 shown below.  The parentage on this one is [(Celebration of Angels x Delaware Doosy) x (Unending Melody x Inner Destiny)] x Blue Hippo.  The pollen parent was a lavender eyed seedling with a double dose of T. Lavender Blue Baby through Delaware Doosy and Unending Melody.  Seedling 58-1 has a much large edge than either parent.  It had a nice scape in basement so we hope it will perform well in garden.