Cleaning some seed pods today. A lot of interesting stuff going on. Things I had hopes for and things I didn't went in opposite directions. I always get pods on Anastasia but it's always small chaff. This year I got a big pod on Anastasia X carte Blanche. Opened her up to full size seeds and chaff. Got about a dozen sow able seeds! A few that were very nice. It would be great if they can germinate.

Joe, let us know if you get germination on that cross. I have the ingredients for it and could try it myself.

We're rooting for you, Joe!

Way to go!

I feel like Carte Blanche has some very potent pollen. If you have tried other 4n pollen on another 4n OT without success, this IS the one to try. Have had a great deal of success where I had almost given up the possibility of producing seed on a few cultivars.

This was in my yard friday after work. I'm a foot off my property line, not sure why the electrical line was marked.


Then today I'm doing some digging and I hear a crunch sound. Come to find an egg of some sort that I smashed burried in the ground


Also got a large L. Henryi "select" bulbs from the lily nook through Ramona. This is a good sized bulb

not sure why the electrical line was marked.

I'll bet your neighbor had their property marked for some digging. They always mark the entire property, even if you only need the front yard done (for example.). If there are more lines buried their, you will find some more paint or flags there in the next day or two.

magnolialover said:I feel like Carte Blanche has some very potent pollen. If you have tried other 4n pollen on another 4n OT without success, this IS the one to try. Have had a great deal of success where I had almost given up the possibility of producing seed on a few cultivars.

If anyone at all felt like posting some Carte Blanche pollen next year, I wouldn't say no...

Remind me Della, and I will.

Ooooo

Divided and scaled a triple nose hybrid seedling of mine.

Actually managed to get some things done in the garden today. Cut down the stems that had died off for the season. Dug up some bulbs that had were not deep enough. Had bulblets sticking up through the soil. Added some soil to low spots. Put some compost down on most of the lily bed. And added compost and earthworm casings to the oldest lily bed.

So all things considered, and figuring I worked 6 hours at my job, pretty productive day I would say.

On another note, some of the bulbs I dug up were spring planted bulbs. Typically I planted in groups of 3 bulbs, some were less but anyways, I really can't believe how many bulblets there were in addition to what I planted. Either I had gotten really good soil to fill the raised bed in with, or I got really lucky. Lol

And what a beautiful November day in the 60's! Can you imagine?
Who would have thought there would still be such time to work in the soil in the garden!

So I did.... reworked a portion of a garden and dug and discarded some of my homemade asiatic hybrids. At least for me, I just can't dig bulbs without my camera at hand, and what did I find?

Last fall I was digging for something and then realized I was near or at where I had a Lilium amabile bulb. I carefully searched what I had dug, and found nothing, so I said to myself "Phew! Lucky I missed it and didn't damage the bulb!". Well somehow I did jostle it, and this is what happened:

I never realized how tight this species's bulbs are - almost like a solid bulb. They would be good candidates for eating, if they are tasty, because they would be easy to clean. I guess when I had examined the bulbs in years past, the thought of edibility was not even in the back of my mind. But, when I look at those older pics in my Lilium archive, they do indeed show the very tightly clasped scales. Now, each one of those stem bulblets will have a new growing space, in the interest of culinary testing.

And another bulb that was "in my way" while renovating: a Griesbach tetra seedling. I was very surprised at the huge size of this bulb (5 inch diameter), since the stem only had four flowers (a record for this particular seedling). The pic looks sort of goofy, like it was taken with a wide angle lens, but no. It's actually take with a 120mm equivalent telephoto, so there is no distortion.

I've never been impressed by this one, with so few flowers at 5.5ft, and the colors are not well defined. I thought I would eat some of the bulb to test the edibility of these dark colored bulbs, and cook some more of it after cold storage to see if the bitterness is lessened. But now, when I pull up my records and looked at the flower pics of the plant again, I am kinda having second thoughts....

What do you think?

I vote EAT IT if that is the best bud count (3?) and the inflorescence sucks. If it has looked better than that (say, last year... or is that last year's photo?) then maybe evaluate one more year (but the act of digging it may set it back a bit).

The blooms though do look nice...

A bulb that size should be producing 10 to 12 buds (or more).

In the pot!

Good. In the pot it goes. Oh, I thought I had said the max was 4 flowers, and actually the bad inflorescence structure is due to it leaning (but that isn't good either).

While we're on the subjects, here's a slide I made for next week's talk:


And another of species bulbs:

Looks like they would have the consistency of something like hummus.

As some of you may have heard, Lily hybridizing legen Dr. Bob Greisbach has retired down south and left his bulbs to a few caretakers to dig and divvy them up. I was fortunate enough to receive a big box of his tetra OT seedlings. Today I planted the bulbs as well as some others in a raised 4x8 bed that I will now dub "the greis-box"!

I love the name. Gries-box.