Got a plan?

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Seedseller1
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Joined: May 31, 2004 11:05 pm
Location: Waterloo, Iowa

Got a plan?

Post by Seedseller1 »

Seems like every year I have a plan as to what I want to achieve as far as crosses go, but either I don't have the pollen ready, I'm running late, I want to save my frozen pollen for other blossoms that will be opening later, the fresh pollen is just too handy, and a thousand other reasons. Three things that I want to work with this year include red pets, rippled edges, and more blues on my streakers. From the seedlings that I posted you can see that you don't have to have all the latest and greatest streakers in your stable to create some interesting plants and for that matter you can create some interesting plants without any streakers at all. Do you have a plan or are you just going to "wing it" like I will do on many crosses?
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Chris_W
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Re: Got a plan?

Post by Chris_W »

Personally I never have a plan, but then again I just dabble a little so I'm not nearly as organized as you probably are.

I really love the ruffled edge plants, and customer are getting into them too. People seem to be over the red pets, personally I think they are highly overrated, but I've seen some recent plants that have a lot of red in the flower scape which seem to really stand out. Variegated plants with red going all the way up the scapes can be stunning. When the red stops part of the way up then it is not noticeable enough. Hosta 'Quarter Note', for example, really stands out when it is flowering.

And I agree with you about the streakers - use the older, easy ones, then add some new traits of your own, then jump off from there and you will have your own individual breeding stock to work with.

Of course, just have fun too :D

Keep us posted!

Chris
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Seedseller1
Posts: 283
Joined: May 31, 2004 11:05 pm
Location: Waterloo, Iowa

Re: Got a plan?

Post by Seedseller1 »

Chris,

Since I started messing with hybridizing, I have kinda backed off on collecting unless of course I find one that I would like to toy with. It seems to me that most of the red pet stuff on the market is medium or smaller sized plants and the red, although striking on some plants, is more difficult to see without bending over or lifting the leaves. Are there any large, vase shaped plants (on the order of Lakeside Surfrider, Millinium, etc) that display red pets? I would think with a "rhubarb red" petiole on a plant like that would be spectacular. Also, even with a plan, you are probably just as likely to produce a seedling that has charactoristics that you deem worthy that is not even close to your original goal. That is what makes it fun for me. For this reason I think there are a number of hybridizers that don't document every cross, just add this or that and hope for the best. I guess I document just to see if what I am using is taking me in the right direction. Either way works and like you stated, just have fun.
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DBoweMD
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Re: Got a plan?

Post by DBoweMD »

I have a couple seedling that are more upright so you can see the red, but the leaves are plain green, not really attention grabbers.. .
I have nice yellows with a lot of red that are not very upright.
I have some greens with excellent red coloring going up into the leaf like K. Beni. a little better than One Man's Treasure.
So working on it. I'm not obsessed with it so might not ever get the ideal... but could get lucky one of these years.
My goals are about the same as yours Mike. The other thing I am working on is fragrance with big flowers with leaves that don't look exactly like Plantaginea. Plantaginea has not accepted any foreign pollen for me, but it's pollen does work on other plants, often producing fragrance.
I have some nice fragrant ones, but they are fairly bland looking foliage. I hope to get a number of plants that have fragrance so I can cross them with each other and maintain fertility. I don't have any fragrant streakers yet. This will probably be the year for that, as I now have a lot of streaked seedlings to work with, and something is bound to accept Plantaginea pollen, which I have frozen.
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