Oystein--is that Awesome I see there? Great!

Yes, it's Awesome x op from Buggy.

My garden is too small and I can't grow both named hybrids and seedlings, most of my named hybrids will be planted in my mothers garden.

You can read more about how I grow my lilies here: http://tangolilies.blogspot.no...

Calin, what happens with seeding is that we plant 'many' and end up with a 'few' Of the 400 to 500 sprouts I had last year--in 5 or 6 years, I'll be lucky to have 20 or so good plants left that I'll run another 5 years on. Some weaker ones will die along the way, and most I eliminate by culling because the plant, flower, etc. is inferior one way or the other. Most I destroy; some of the better ones I may pass out as garden plants to others and only the very best I keep. Some might say it's a lot of work and time for so little, but it's that the 'so little' part in the end that is very, very rewarding. Not to mention all the surprizes and learning experiences along the way! Every day is enjoyably!

You're fortunate to be young enough to where you will be able to grow many generations of your own crosses. Getting started in this cross pollenation business at an early age is important as you will see and apperciate in the future.

Calin, Im sowing, and will be sowing for at least another 1-2 months......where? ..Im if I know..............Anthing is possible

I totally get it Lorn.
About creating new lilies...haven't they all been out there now?
LoL Anthony... anything is possible, but there's limits, right?

No, it's still possible to create new types of lilies. And even though some seems similar they might be stronger. I'm growing hybrids from L. rosthornii from seeds. L. rosthornii are a rather new lily and have not been used in hybridizing much. I also have some seedlings between a trumpet and the new lily Lankon, they should give some interesting hybrids.

Wow. Good to know
Well, I am still at the stage of getting seeds of cool lilies. Will be at least a few years till I can start playing with them.

Do you grow seeds of hybrids or just species? If you join NALS they have a seedlist that are really exiting that you can buy seeds from. I might have some seeds for you in the fall, contact me in october if you're interested.

Calin--and, start training yourself now on keeping good records. If you haven't already, pick up a couple notebooks to start; one for seeding and one for pollenating and make sure you document everything well. Never let a day end without keeping those records up to date. I also find it handy to keep a small spiral pocket size note book and pen handy to carry around and make daily notes while in the garden. These notes I later transfer to a third journal where I record growing characturistics and other events. When you obtain seeds from other people, always try to find out what the pollen and pod parents were.

Nothing replaces handwritten notes. Be sure you date every entry. I transfer a lot of my notes to the computer, usually on spreadsheets, for easy and quick access, but I never throw away my notebooks/notepads. There have been times when I questioned my own notes on the computer (wondering if I copied them correctly), and I used my handwritten notes to verify.

so true!

Does anyone here use ground Coco Fiber as part of their seed germinating/starting mix?

Last year I was at a wholesaler picking up my Fafard 52 mix, and I got a big bag of what they call Metro-mix 360, which is ground coconut fiber. I was disappointed that is was ground so fine, as I wanted to use longer fibers that would have better draining quality for my frits. I tested it against the 52 mix (excellently draining), and it held a little more than twice as much water in the medium. I did some experimenting (not with lilies) with it last spring, but no results, even tentatively, yet. My preliminary thoughts are that the ground coco fiber would be fine for germinating seeds and seedling growth where water regimes are more carefully monitored,but I am leery about permanent use in less frequently maintained pots, perhaps just because I haven't tried it yet. With what little I know about it, I think I would still mix perlite with ground coco fiber, if it were me.

I am thinking of using a 50/50 mix, ground Ccco Fiber/Vermiculite premoistened in sealed baggies for germination, then pricking the sprouts out and planting in my current starting/growing mix. The Coco Fiber, I'm told, acts as a natural fungus control by absorbing it and holding it' and therefore prevents seed rot. Some folks here use it for geranium cuttings, etc. The type they have here at that upscale garden center I mention sometimes, I believe is precut to 3/4" length and this stuff is not cheap, for sure. The next time I go there, I'll ask the Master Gardener more in depth about it.

I don't have any problems at all (that I know of) with my current materials and methods, but this is an area that my curiousity is going to drive my to experiment with, maybe yet this Spring even. More fun!!

Roosterlorn said:The Coco Fiber, I'm told, acts as a natural fungus control

I wouldn't know about that. It very well could be.

Roosterlorn said:by absorbing it and holding it' and therefore prevents seed rot.

"It" being the fungus? Quite a nebulous statement. I'd love to know the mechanics behind that!

The fibers in the ground coco fiber mix that I have are hardly discernible. It has the consistency of the peat that you would get in a small bag for potting (not like the cubic foot bails of peat).

Anyone else use coconut fibers?

Oh, I agree Rick, That "grabbing and holding it" (the fungus) just doesn't make sense to me either--that's why I threw that statement out there--just to see what comments bounced back. The fellow I heard it from was into hybridizing and seeding Peonies. He was in the check out, the next person ahead of me when I noticed he had bought it, so our discussion only lasted about 30 seconds or so and he was on his way--gone. I believe he meant that the Coco Fiber, being so absorbant, it would hold a lot of water and therefore hold a lot of fungus with it--lowering the concentration of it. Meaning there would be less fungus available to rot the seed. But that doesn't make sense because there's still some fungus, and that could multiply, right?

Gosh, It just dawned on me as I'm writing this. Maybe this guy was talking about toxins, a situation like we would get into with wide crosses. Could it be? Don't know anything about Peony seeding. Maybe it would draw some toxins out. Any thoughts?

I'm baffled.

I'm going to take the 'go slow' approach with Coco Fiber. The more I read about its global souce locations, the variablity and reliability in processing to remove Sodium, etc at those locations leads me to being real skeptical of what I would end up getting here in block or bag form. Where's the Quality Control and What are the finished Product Specs? And from whom and where do some of the US sources get their fiber from? I guess the RHS has one that they've granted approval to. Too many unanswered questions right now with little or no knowledge of actual user experience as it applies to seed germination (other than 'You-Tube and that fellow at the garden center). I'm going to continue working in the direction of trying some eventually, however.

About 40 open pollenated seeds of this one planted 3/9/12. (Note: In picture one, for flower size estimate, the wooden stake in the lower right corner is a full 1 inch square rough sawed tarping pole.)




And 25 days later on morning of 4/3/12.


It's hard to count them in the pictures, but there are actually 38 or 39 little ones.

Update on late seedlings of Fall 2012:
Last update on Jan. 27th, plants were to go into cold room to force dormancy ( see last post).
Plants looked like this:

Plants were placed in a cold room under light and the temperature reduced gradually from 52'F to about 36'F during the period 1/26/13 to 2/25/13. I could never get any lower than 35'F because I was cooling the room with outside air by open window and on some days the outside air temperature began to warm higher than the temperature inside the room. During that time period about 1/3rd of the leafs had turned brown, about 2/3rds were yellow and only an extreme few of the new inner leafs were still green.

Because holding the temperature down was becoming increasingly difficult and I saw suitable weather coming the week of the Feb. 25th with temps between 27'F and 34'F, I took the opportunity to freeze all the foliage (which didn't freeze until it got down to 28'F). All the foliage was then clipped and any remaining stems were dried a couple days, then dusted with Captin. They were then covered with a layer of about 1/2 inch of raw sphagnum moss and on March 2nd they were placed in a 50 gallon tub like the one pictured below and covered all sides, top and bottom with finely ground pine chips as insulation medium and the tub top cover locked in place tightly . A small remote thermometer was placed on the surface of one of the pots so I could monitor the temperature (which had one mininum extreme of 27.8'F and one Maximun extreme of 34.9') The average pot surface temperature was 30.9 for the period 2/25/13 to 4/3/13. The pine chip media did an excellant job; by far the greatest number of data was clustered tightly around the average. These were then pulled for inspection yesterday (4/3/13) and repacked for another 3 or 4 weeks of chill and the finally rejoin in sync with the rest of their 2012 companion seedlings. An exploratory showed the little bulbs to be in great condition. Here, then, are some pictures from yesterday.








I don't have pictures of the intermediate steps of freezing, clipping, powdering and packing to show. I did take pictures using a new SD card but they aren't even on that suspect card.