Hybridyzing hostas

wholyhosta · Post by **wholyhosta** » May 31, 2005 4:19 pm

Hey, folks!

I need some encouragement/ moral support here!

I want to see in I can sucessfully cross some of my hostas that are blooming now(GA-z7b) but I would like to hear if any of you have suggestions about possible crosses- The only thing I'm specifically interested in is working with the Piecrusts but I only have two, so it's actually wide open with what I have blooming right now, which is:

Green Piecrust
Golden Sculpture
Glory
Golden Waffles
Elegans
Guacamole
Gold Standard-maybe available

I know that I won't really know if I was sucessful until the seed sets, but I want to give it a try! And I can save pollen for later crossbreeding efforts. Since I don't know what the heck I'm doing, any and all suggestions are welcome and profusely appreciated. Thanks- this is a big switch for me from just lettin' my hostas do their thang!

Brenda

thehostagourmet · Post by **thehostagourmet** » May 31, 2005 5:01 pm

Brenda, first go to the Hosta Library and click on the Hybridizing button. Read, and print if necessary, everything there.

Learn to recognize when a flower is ready. Learn how to prepare a flower to be the pod parent by emasculating (some women are good at that), removing stamens before their pollen is ripe. I try to do it the day or evening before the flower is to open, so it won't cross with its own pollen. Save the stamens, or anthers alone, in small coin envelopes until ripe. (They'll get yellow all over you.) You can feeze in air-tight plastic containers for later use, up to 5 yrs. or more.

Take pollen from 'Green Piecrust' and dab it on everything that's in flower and can't run away from you. Take pollen from 'Golden Sculpture', 'Golden Waffles', and 'Elegans' and dab on prepared flowers of 'Green Piecrust'. You can use the same flowers from which you removed the stamens, only the next morning, if you removed them before they were ripe.

Try it, you'll like it.

George

Justaysam · Post by **Justaysam** » May 31, 2005 6:00 pm

Good advice, not much else to add except to keep track of the pollen you are using. Then once your seedlings are growing and you see the traits, you will know how you got them and how to improve on them in future crosses.

thehostagourmet · Post by **thehostagourmet** » Jun 02, 2005 11:35 am

Mr. Leafmould, where are you? I thought you'd offer your sage advice too.

George

DBoweMD · Post by **DBoweMD** » Jun 02, 2005 4:57 pm

Read through the hosta seed exchange too, there is a lot of advice on growing the seedlings which is more important than crossing.
The main thing with the crosses is to protect the flowers from bees, and to do your thing first thing in the morning. I cover the scapes I intend to cross wit hthe plastic bags thet enclose my newspapers, the night before. Don't worry that it doesn't work all the time either, I think I get less than 25% take. You can tell it has worked in about 4 days when the flowers won't fall off.
Some plants won't set seed no matter how hard you try, some are great.
Kabitan and Pee Dee gold flash are really good pod parents.
Try a lot of them, you will learn from your own trial and error.