As the snow piles up outside this morning, iris bloom season seems very far away. One bright spot is that seedlings from my 2013 crosses are starting to emerge. Weirdly, all of the ones that have emerged so far are from crosses that involved either 'I Must Have It' or 'Chocolates and Silk'. Hope the rest will be along soon.

How exciting Kent!! I hope we're all around in a year or two or three to see the blooms from your crosses!!

Arlyn

10" of snow this morning & seedling box buried underneath in their trench.

That's why I start mine under lights in the basement. If I left them outside during the winter, it'd be June before they germinated, they wouldn't be big enough to transplant into the seedling beds until August or September, and it would 2016 or 2017 before most bloomed.

This way, they usually get planted in the seedling beds just before the TB bloom begins, have a month or so of nice weather to settle in and grow before the heat of summer slows them way down, and have all of fall to grow big and produce increase. With any luck at all, 80 - 90% will bloom in 2015.

Surprisingly, that extra year makes a big difference in terms of space dedicated to seedling beds. The sooner they bloom, the sooner they get lined out or (more likely) turned into compost.

And the sooner they bloom the sooner you can use them in your breeding program........

Love your new avatar, Paul!!

Kent,
I also started my seeds last fall using info from one of your earlier threads and comments you made in a tree mail. They are growing under lights in my basement this year rather than depending on germination over winter and in spring as I have done for the past 7 years. Shown below are the last pictures taken on 12/29/13 just before heading to Fl Keys for winter. I expect they will have grown quite a bit by the time I return in March. Should be easy to plant the plugs and get well established before the summer heat sets in.

Kent those look really good a great start everything I had from Nobel Gesture which blooms really early like I Must Have It was the same way it was way ahead of the rest. We potted up all of my seeds from this year today, I started them a week later than last year and had quite a few of the earlier blooming varities had roots starting and trying to grow through the paper towel, while some of the late ones showed nothing I thought it was kind of a fluke thing last year but I guess not I will have to try to start them even later next year.

I would love to look at some of your pictures of last years seedlings especially the ones from Magical. I used it a lot this year and curious to see what your kids look like from it.

Magical has been a bit frustrating to work with. I've made a number of crosses with it, but most failed to take. Of the pods that did set, most didn't contain very many seeds. Of the seeds that were planted, most didn't germinate.

The end result of all of that is I have just one seedling out of Magical in my beds. I do like almost everything about it. Growth is good. Branching and bud count appear to be very good. Flower form is nice (although the pictures don't really do it justice, with the weather conditions we had last spring it was hard to get decent pictures of anything). However, flower color is not good. If it was pure white, it might be OK, but the yellow in the interior of the flower really doesn't add anything at all.



I did keep this seedling and made a couple crosses on it hoping to retain its good qualities while getting better color in the flowers. Both of those crosses took and I see they are starting to germinate so maybe the grandchildren of Magical will be better to me than the children have been. Also had one successful cross with Magical itself last spring and those seedlings are germinating as well, so I haven't completely given up on it. We'll see.

I think I showed pictures of all the seedlings worth looking at, and quite a few that weren't , as they were blooming last spring. If you wish, I'd be happy to go through them again, but don't want to seem redundant.

yellow at the hafts not good color? why?

I like it.

Me too -- it's a beautiful flower! I don't know about the others Kent, but I'd love to see your seedlings!! Even if it's *again*!

Ditto on showing the seedlings!

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, of course. The yellow in the heart of this flower is a a muddy yellow and creates an almost grey effect from a distance. There are grey iris that are very attractive, Haunted Heart is one that quickly comes to mind, but this isn't one of them. Given the parentage behind it, I do hope it can give something good down the road.

Odd -- it doesn't look muddy in the photos.......................

But I'm sure that you know what you're doing and are the one to be making these decisions.

with everyone else would like to see the pictures of the seedlings I missed out on a lot of the earlier spring threads, work kinda consumed us this spring and I spent more time working then playing. I tried to get Magical to set quite a few pods as well and only got a couple to take so I was also disappointed on that end but I did find it's pollen was really fertile and most everything I tried with it took and with good seed count so hopefully get quite a few to germinate and start growing in the greenhouse. I think it is such a good plant with great qualities, and everything I have read it grows well everywhere so I was hoping it would help improve some of my other favorites and pass on it's bud count and branching to them. I have visions of Magical in all sorts of different colors but so far the only thing I have seen from it is the pictures Barry had in his catalog and those seedlings looked Outstanding so I will continue to work with it.

How about some median seedlings?
plicata MTB


red MTB


MTB sibling to the red

I really like those stripped falls on that last one, Lucy! Any plans for that one ?...Arlyn