The garden on Labor Day weekend:
The brightly colored, immature petunias I used to fill in garden gaps early in the season now crawl like flowerless green snakes over everything. My battle against pokeweed, bindweed and black swallow-wort have been fought and lost. Crabgrass and carpetweed blanket the garden paths I so carefully cleared and maintained early in the summer. Perennials at their prime in July look haggard and worn, brow-beaten by the sun and ready to call it quits for the season. Alas, the garden officially look like a very-tired, very brown jungle.
Sigh.
A few perennials keep up the good fight. For example, the black-eyed susans, pictured here, just keep on kicking. They basically comprise the whole garden at this point. The purple bush in this picture is, I think, a butterfly bush of some sort. I thought for the longest time it was giant hyssop... but sadly, I'm really not sure what it is. Why do I not label things when I buy them?! I only label my daylilies, reasoning that I just need to remember the most general things about my other plants--like their common names. For example, this is black-eyed susan, yes, but it is a black-eyed susan that blooms only in the late summer, is 6 ft tall, has delicate branching and petit flowers and spreads like nobody's business. But the specific cultivar name? No idea. I'm not even sure it's a cultivar. But with the big purple plant I can't even remember the most basic thing... its common name.
Here is a close-up of the purple plant . Anyone able to identify it? It know it looks a bit like loosestrife, but it's not that. Its base is woody.
Onward.
Although my gardens are a mess and currently dominated only by black-eyed susans, my daylily seedling bed, though still mostly green and flowerless, now sports a few blooms. Some of these blooms are quite pedestrian, but some have also been surprisingly gorgeous. I tend to value those (still un-bloomed) seedlings with parental lineages that are new, edgy and cut-throat. Oh la la! What kind of bloom will I see if I crossed this 2017 crazy spider with this 2016 luscious, petit beauty? Those pairings that include one or both parents from older lineages thrill me less. Yet... it's often those pairings that surprise me in terms of their elegance and beauty. I think that the newer daylilies I use in my hybridizing are often so gorgeous and unique already that it's hard to top them. Right now I'm talking strictly blooms. These plants are still too much in their infancy to know habit--and, of course, it's possible even the blooms will change between now and next season.
Because I'm new to hybridizing (I've really only been hybridizing in earnest for the last two years), everything about it still surprises and fascinates me. For example, I find it so interesting how you can have seeds from the same exact pod create such different looking flowers. It makes me think about children (human children, I mean) and how one parental combination can create such different looking progeny. It's also fascinating how when pairing dayliles (or humans, or dogs... or anything) beautiful + beautiful doesn't always equal beautiful, and common/boring + common/boring can create something exceptionally unique and gorgeous. Most fascinating of all--sometimes a seedling looks nothing like either parent and you think, Where did THAT come from? In instances like those I then feel the need to check out the parents' parents, and then the parents' parents' parents to see if I can find evidence that I didn't actually mislabel the cross, and that's why the seedling look nothing like either parent.
For example, this seedling just bloomed yesterday.
Here is a close-up of the purple plant . Anyone able to identify it? It know it looks a bit like loosestrife, but it's not that. Its base is woody.
Onward.
Although my gardens are a mess and currently dominated only by black-eyed susans, my daylily seedling bed, though still mostly green and flowerless, now sports a few blooms. Some of these blooms are quite pedestrian, but some have also been surprisingly gorgeous. I tend to value those (still un-bloomed) seedlings with parental lineages that are new, edgy and cut-throat. Oh la la! What kind of bloom will I see if I crossed this 2017 crazy spider with this 2016 luscious, petit beauty? Those pairings that include one or both parents from older lineages thrill me less. Yet... it's often those pairings that surprise me in terms of their elegance and beauty. I think that the newer daylilies I use in my hybridizing are often so gorgeous and unique already that it's hard to top them. Right now I'm talking strictly blooms. These plants are still too much in their infancy to know habit--and, of course, it's possible even the blooms will change between now and next season.
Because I'm new to hybridizing (I've really only been hybridizing in earnest for the last two years), everything about it still surprises and fascinates me. For example, I find it so interesting how you can have seeds from the same exact pod create such different looking flowers. It makes me think about children (human children, I mean) and how one parental combination can create such different looking progeny. It's also fascinating how when pairing dayliles (or humans, or dogs... or anything) beautiful + beautiful doesn't always equal beautiful, and common/boring + common/boring can create something exceptionally unique and gorgeous. Most fascinating of all--sometimes a seedling looks nothing like either parent and you think, Where did THAT come from? In instances like those I then feel the need to check out the parents' parents, and then the parents' parents' parents to see if I can find evidence that I didn't actually mislabel the cross, and that's why the seedling look nothing like either parent.
For example, this seedling just bloomed yesterday.
Very pretty! It's a cross between Kansas City Kicker (Stamile 2005) and Doma Knaresborough (Petit '94). Frankly, it doesn't look at all like either parent-- at all.
Here' a pictorial family tree:
X
French Cavilier X Sabine Bauer = Kansas City Kicker
New Seedling bloomed 8/31
Bizzare, huh? The real question is whether my labeling is off. Kansas City Kicker is right next to Sparks Heir to a Kingdom in my garden.
Might it, in fact, be the pod parent? But I don't think so. I label each cross immediately after I have make it, and so it's unlikely that I would label the pod parent incorrectly. But still....
This is the problem I have with hybridizing right now. I trust myself and my labeling, but not 100%. I need to develop a labeling system that is fail-proof. You'd think it wouldn't be laborious or complicated, but it is, at least for me. I must be so diligent to place a label on the bloom immediately after I make a cross, because I forget or mix things up if I make several crosses and then expect myself to remember them.
I also have trouble making sure I use a label medium that will not allow the written words to fade in the sun. I always label with a black Sharpie, but some tags hold Sharpie better than other over time. This is even more a problem with seedlings. I like the idea of having the label under the ground, attached to the fan of the plant, but when I first transplant the seedlings they are too small to have a label attached in this way. I find that often I won't catch that a label has faded until it's too late, and I find myself holding the label to the light, desperately hoping to be able to decipher what it said!
I hope to write a bit more consistently now late summer has arrived. Even if no one reads my drivel it's great to have a record of my gardening thoughts. I leave you with a picture of Hazel, who has been playing in the pokeweed.
Here' a pictorial family tree:
X
Betty Warren Woods X Shisado = Doma Knaresborough
=French Cavilier X Sabine Bauer = Kansas City Kicker
Doma Knaresborough x Kansas City Kicker =
New Seedling bloomed 8/31
Bizzare, huh? The real question is whether my labeling is off. Kansas City Kicker is right next to Sparks Heir to a Kingdom in my garden.
Sparks Heir to A Kingdom
Might it, in fact, be the pod parent? But I don't think so. I label each cross immediately after I have make it, and so it's unlikely that I would label the pod parent incorrectly. But still....
This is the problem I have with hybridizing right now. I trust myself and my labeling, but not 100%. I need to develop a labeling system that is fail-proof. You'd think it wouldn't be laborious or complicated, but it is, at least for me. I must be so diligent to place a label on the bloom immediately after I make a cross, because I forget or mix things up if I make several crosses and then expect myself to remember them.
I also have trouble making sure I use a label medium that will not allow the written words to fade in the sun. I always label with a black Sharpie, but some tags hold Sharpie better than other over time. This is even more a problem with seedlings. I like the idea of having the label under the ground, attached to the fan of the plant, but when I first transplant the seedlings they are too small to have a label attached in this way. I find that often I won't catch that a label has faded until it's too late, and I find myself holding the label to the light, desperately hoping to be able to decipher what it said!
I hope to write a bit more consistently now late summer has arrived. Even if no one reads my drivel it's great to have a record of my gardening thoughts. I leave you with a picture of Hazel, who has been playing in the pokeweed.
