Hi Theresa.
I am a 'backyard hybridizer' and find it to be both a lot of work and a lot of fun. It is a lot like daylilies themselves. That is, you can get into it as deep as you allow yourself to get. Daylily shows have a section for seedlings, so you can exhibit them at a show, but there is no requirement to do so. Some hybridizers take their best seedlings to several shows in hopes of winning a "Best in Class" seedling award or even a "Best in Show" so that they can say that it was an award winner as a seedling when they do register it in order to improve sales and possibly increase the asking price. This is also a way for a hybridizer who is not well known to increase awareness of his/her work.
For the backyard hybridizer, being the first person to ever see a bloom from a plant you grew from seed needs to be the reward you are looking for. Sharing your effort with friends can also be rewarding. Perhaps you will enter a seedling and win a competition, but that should not be the reason you are hybridizing. Instead you want to see what you are able to come up with in your own garden. Whether you plant ten seeds a year or 10,000, the odds are the same regarding getting a spectacular seedling that will become the next great thing in daylilies. That only makes it less likely that the small hybridizer will do so, it does not make it impossible.
As for registering a daylily, I have not yet done so. I have grown out three so far that I have hoped to register, but one simply does not have adequate branching and bud count although everything else about the plant is great. That one will become a very nice garden plant and I will give some away to friends or through my local club. The other two still might be registered, but I have some newer seedlings that I think are much superior to them, so I may just end up with more garden plants so I have more room to grow the newer seedlings. I don't believe that there are any actual requirement for registering a daylily outside of filling out the paperwork, choosing a name and paying the fee. However, when I do register a plant, I want it to be one that would be a good choice for the average gardener - someone who wants a daylily to be tall enough to be seen in the garden, have a good face, have an adequate number of blooms by branching and/or being capable of multiple re-blooms, be a plant that thrives under normal conditions, is fertile and increases well. Everyone has their own standards though, and a few might just want to say that they registered a daylily and not be concerned with some of the things that I listed. The list is simply my own requirements.
Just to give you an idea of what I do, my limiting factor is bed space. I plant about 300 seedlings each year, but I don't have room to keep nearly that number for two or three years, so I cull pretty heavily each year. For example, this year I have about 325 first-blooming-year seedlings in two beds. I have about 125 seedlings that bloomed for the first time in 2012, 75 seedlings that bloomed for the first time in 2011 and just a couple from each of the three previous years which takes me back to when I started hybridizing. This year is the "last chance" year for the "previous years" seedlings - - either they are registration quality or I like them enough that I want them in my garden, or they've got to go so I have room for the seedlings I will plant next spring. I also need to reduce the seedlings from 2011 and 2012 by at least half (hopefully more!). That is the most difficult thing - culling. Sure, some of them are easily recognized as being unfit for any garden, but by year three, those are all long gone. That's when things get tough. You've grown them, you've put effort (and dollars) into them, and you drive yourself crazy over which ones you keep and which you don't. The "big guys" may view culling as part of their business, but for the backyard guy or gal, you want to keep far too many.
Hope I didn't bore you with all of this, but even though I hate getting up early, I do it starting in early May and keep doing so until some time in July so I can hybridize as it gets hot early in the day down here in Georgia, and tets don't set seed very well (or maybe not at all!) when the temperature is above 85. OF course, then there's the problem of picking which 300 seeds to plant the next year out of the 1500 or 2000 seeds you managed to set, but that's another story.
Larry
