I found a great deal on Amazon - a P-Touch Printer that uses laminated tape (TZe). It's even cheaper now -- $47.12 with the $22.95 coupon! It's supposed to be weather/UV resistant tape, so I am using it with the stainless steel plates/posts form Kincaid.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OCEKCDA/

I'll let you know the labels fare in the Georgia heat!

I have a reasonable control over my Daylilies, but what to do with seedlings..?

In 2015 I sowed 3 to 5 seed from the same crosses together and when I planted them out (as very small seedlings) I planted them together.
Now they are starting to bloom , but not all seedlings (from the same cross) look alike!
As long as they are blooming I have managed to 'label' the scapes with either
A: nothing
B: a tomato-clip
C: a tiewrap
D: a piece of string

I took a lot of photo's and named those for instance BEVA-B1: first bloom on cross BEVA on the scape with a tomato-clip attached.

But what do I do when the scapes are drying up and fall over??
What is a good and easy way to keep track of the different fans in a small clump?
Should I dig it up and line them out..? I'm not sure I have enough room for that, plus I'm not sure all of the fans are keepers..

I should have thought of this when I planted them!

Mayo

Mayo62 said:I have a reasonable control over my Daylilies, but what to do with seedlings..?

In 2015 I sowed 3 to 5 seed from the same crosses together and when I planted them out (as very small seedlings) I planted them together.
Now they are starting to bloom , but not all seedlings (from the same cross) look alike!
As long as they are blooming I have managed to 'label' the scapes with either
A: nothing
B: a tomato-clip
C: a tiewrap
D: a piece of string

I took a lot of photo's and named those for instance BEVA-B1: first bloom on cross BEVA on the scape with a tomato-clip attached.

But what do I do when the scapes are drying up and fall over??
What is a good and easy way to keep track of the different fans in a small clump?
Should I dig it up and line them out..? I'm not sure I have enough room for that, plus I'm not sure all of the fans are keepers..

I should have thought of this when I planted them!

Mayo

Hi Mayo! I have no suggestions because I haven't had to deal with this yet (and will be watching the thread because this will eventually become an issue for me ) but what is a tomato clip? I've never heard of that before.

(Again, I could Google, but what's the fun in that? )

I am just getting started with seedlings also. So I find this very interesting and relevant to my efforts at the moment.
My plan is to plant my seeds (up to five per cup) in plastic cups in the ground and put a vinyl blind label in the cup with an ID on it.
When the plants get large enough then I will remove them from the cups and give each seedling a separate vinyl blind label with it's own ID.
I am thinking due to limited space I will not be able to grow more than 5 seedlings of each cross, and still may not be able to plant all the crosses , just according to how productive my efforts result in being.
I am still playing with the plant list allowing us to enter my seedlings. My system right now for adding an ID to each seedling looks like:
2017F01a,
1. 2017 the year of the cross ( might should have used just the last two digits)
2. Initial of the hybridizer(I have seeds and seedlings crossed by other people)
3. A sequential number for the cross
4. A an alphabetical letter for each seedling

I will have all this info entered into the new Plant List addition Dave just installed for keeping up with seedlings and NOIDs.
This photo was made before I came up with my new numbering system, and before I built my new beds, but it shows the vinyl blind labels I plan on using and the general idea.


Oh forgot to add: .
I limited the number of pollen parents chosen and made a list of the plants pollinated by each. If I did more I added those to the list.
By keeping it limited to only three or four pollen parents it makes keeping up with them much easier,(I did how ever actually stray a bit and a few plants ended up being pollinated by more than one cultivar) so those I will not be able to tell who the pollen parent is. But, it was worth it to me being I needed no clips, ties, etc.
I know there will be a few mistakes along the way and I will have some bee pods throwing things off a bit, but to keep things simple and fun I elected to go this route.

I have very little space and typically start out with more than one seedling per cross. I plant all the same seedlings from a cross together with one label with the name of the cross. That's for the first year. Since squirrels are known to destroy young seedlings by digging them up I usually end up with 1-3 seedlings/cross. Once they end up blooming I give each seedling it's own label with the seedling number (I have a list of each cross and each seedling with a unique number for all). I made an entire seedling bed last year and hopefully some of those will bloom next year. So right now I only have the one cross label but that should change next year. After blooming I intend to move many (if not all of them out) to make room for more seedlings.

I'll try and take a picture of the seedling bed so that you can see that my space is pretty tight. Luckily this far north I don't get rapid fan increase so typically I only have 1-3 fans when the seedlings start to bloom. This makes it pretty easy to keep track of which fans go with which seedling. If I had the increase some of you further South have I'd have to completely change my system because the seedlings would be too close together. I'd never be able to figure out who is who!

Sorry this took so long. We had several days of rain & then I just plain forgot.

Here is a picture of my little seedling bed. It is 3 feet x 3 feet I think. I have 16 different crosses in there.



Here are a couple of pictures of seedlings and the labels.




The first picture has 3 seedlings and the second has two.

I started out with 1-5 seedlings for each marker. When they were small I covered the bed to keep the squirrels out. But I had to uncover it this Spring because some of the seedlings were getting very tall. The squirrels came & destroyed several seedlings. They also dug some up which I saved but may have been replanted by the wrong marker. So now I have 1-3 seedlings per marker. Hopefully many of these puny guys will bloom next year. But so far I think only one has a second fan. As each blooms they will get their own marker with an individual number. If they are too close to a sibling I will move them after they bloom.

When my seedlings were small they díd have there their own label
My seedling beds started out looking just like all of yours!

The problem has started now that the plants are 2 years old and have grown a bit...




Mayo

I actually think you'd be able to figure out who is who pretty easily. The bed looks crowded because of the other plants in the bed. But the seedlings still look like they have space between them.

I'm glad you posted that picture because I was about to plant some perennials in my daylily beds. I'm going to have to rethink that idea. Maybe I'll only plant ones that are creeping?

But you are going to have to decide to get rid of some. I haven't done it yet but will in the Fall. It's not going to be hard because the ones that have to go have obvious faults. The coming years will be much harder!

the plants mixed in with the seedlings are annuals that can be removed anytime I want, that is not the problem.
Perhaps these photo's shows it better:



What looked like 1 DL in the other photo is in fact a small clump of 3 different seedlings (from the same cross), plus extra fans in some cases.


(don't mind the clovers : they are for the bees and butterflies )

In 1 'clump' the flowers can look very different:


and

and even:
and

Mayo

wow that looks confusing indeed!! Best of luck to you, Mayo!!

Okay, based on the photos of your bed in your last post I still would have said that there was plenty of space to tell them apart. But, if you planted them like I did (all from the same cross close together) then I see that the clumps are really different plants. All I can suggest is that you follow the scapes and mark the fans somehow. As each fan matures and blooms you can sort them into the different seedlings. But you will definitely have to move them! Of course if there are some you don't want you could just remove those fans as they bloom and just leave fans of the seedlings you do like. But they all look pretty good to me!

I'm lucky. I've had my first 10 bloom the last few years and they all bloomed with only 1-4 fans so they were easy to tell apart.