Today, while poking around my seeded pots I saw a very surprising thing! A seedling from a cross which was a shot in the dark.
Last summer I had made a few interesting crosses and
I got two really fat seed pods from lionheart x Eros and also Chengdu x Patricia's pride(OAxA). Both pods had turned up with a bunch of really chaffy seeds. I saved them anyway and through reading about you guys sowing OT seeds and reading an Art Evans article in which he states "always plant chaff" I decided to give them a go anyway. I loaded two 4 inch pots with 25-40 seeds from each pod. What I found very surprisingly was a seedling from Chengdu x P's pride! I am very suprised and excited. We'll see if any more pop up but for now I'm ecstatic.
Side note: Through some research I found out that Eros is probably at triploid so it's pollen would likely be sterile. For that reason I'm not optimistic about the other pod.
Edit: Anthony, I also have some Aussie hairpins on the radar!
Planted on 2/1 and it came up today! My garage has been on the cooler side though with lows of 55 degrees and a high of 68 degrees during that time. 64 today. Now he's under the lights!
Anthony, I did not cross Netty's pride. It was Patricia's Pride, also know as Purple Reign I believe. When you say you've hit a wall with the dark ones, do you mean that you couldn't get them to cross or there wasn't much variation in the seedlings?
Well I am up to three seedlings of this interspecific cross! With the weather warming slightly hopefully it will jump start some more, as well as my other seedlings. A very interesting experiment so far though for sure.