Thanks everyone
.All this info is enormously helpful. That's what I thought you meant Lynn but just needed to be sure. Details This plant breeding is a detail oriented adventure. I better start yesterday making room for all these seedlings. I just can't even wrap my head around your numbers Kevin. I also cannot wait for clinic.

My plan has always been to get the seedlings to a stage that I can evaluate them in the first year. This means that I must really push their growth in the first season. So I give them the Quick Start treatment so that they give me a good indication of their potential in that first year of growth. I do generally hold over that crop for the second year so I can pick out any I might have missed. Probably even then I will have missed a few.

However, I need to free up the beds for more seedlings! This next spring my numbers will be my best, at least based upon the sea of bags of seed stalks now and I've still got a few dozen to harvest.

Am glad more of you will be joining in on the insanity!

Kevin

Seed bags have taken over the whole shelf in my closet and there are a few more in the garage but it gets damp in there so going to have to find an inside place very soon. I got seeds today from a friend from S. g. Ed's Hybrid. Does anyone have that one? Got some plants too. Very nice. Too dark for a picture now.

Jo Ann,

Multiply that by 200 and that looks like mine! One quarter of my garage is now in bags!

I do put 12-20 bags in bigger shopping bags to dry just so that it keeps the space down a bit. This has been such a great year for seed to form that I went a bit crazy. The only seed stalks still maturing from my crosses are the Nightwood X Purple Dazzler and Purple Dazzler X Nightwood stalks. It feels good to see the end of the tunnel! Of course it will take me a week to clean the seed and store them later this fall. The one good news of this dry and warm summer is that the seed seems to be maturing more quickly than normal.

Of course I have ~4 K daylily seeds and 7K iris seeds to plant too....... not to mention daffodils, cyclamen, penstemon, ....... OK I'm an addict!

Kevin

Kevin oh man that's so wild!!

My seedbags fit one 1'x1' metal cookie-box, but still there are like 190 different crosses and about 100 bee pollinated varieties in it. I planned on downsizing a bit, so I did not do every possible crossing and I will most probably not saw all the different seeds. But there are several different crosses from 'Plastic', 'Andre Smits', S. ciliosum borisii and my most favourite NOID with the red and golden summer colour. Those I have to sow absolutely.
I don't have space for another 2000 seedlings. But I will start worrying about space restrictions, when it comes to transplant next spring...

Michale that is probably what i will do too. Germinate them in pots or flats and then go crazy trying to figure out where to plant them as they grow. My shelf is longer than what you see in that picture but Kevin..... one quarter of the garage.....OMG. + day lilies and iris......There will not be room for the clinic in your yard...lol

JungleShadows said:I do put 12-20 bags in bigger shopping bags to dry just so that it keeps the space down a bit. This has been such a great year for seed to form that I went a bit crazy. The only seed stalks still maturing from my crosses are the Nightwood X Purple Dazzler and Purple Dazzler X Nightwood stalks. It feels good to see the end of the tunnel! Of course it will take me a week to clean the seed and store them later this fall. The one good news of this dry and warm summer is that the seed seems to be maturing more quickly than normal.

Of course I have ~4 K daylily seeds and 7K iris seeds to plant too....... not to mention daffodils, cyclamen, penstemon, ....... OK I'm an addict!

Kevin

Just wanted to mention as I'm reading through the topics on this forum, this is an excellent topic and I've learned so much, not only pollinating semps, but storage of seed, sowing, and duration of seedling growth before making selection.

Kevin, the first step of addressing addiction, is to admit you're an addict I might be a couple years away from becoming addictively involved in semp hybridizing as I rebuild my meager collection. And I need to carefully consider how much to take on, dabbled with some daylily crosses this year, but my primary focus is Epimedium hybridization, and picking up on a number of rhizomatous Allium hybrid lines that I put on back burner until I retired (June 2016).

Was the Big Six-O named for your age milestone? It's a great looking one. I noticed in the Sempervivum database the year of registration is 20014, that's pretty darn far in the future, why the delay

@JungleShadows
Kevin I remember you saying that the semp pollen can be stored. How long can it be stored? Stored in the frig or freezer for long term?

Yes, although I rarely do it as I prefer using fresh pollen.

The trick is to decant it from the anthers. The pollen is stable the anthers not so much. I use microfuge tubes that are ~1" long and I can store a bunch in a plastic bag in the refrigerator. If you want to save for a year or more store in the freezer with a dessicant.

Hope that helps.

Kevin

@ediblelandscape
Daniel here is our answer.

Hmmm, might give this a try after all.

Thank you Kevin.

GeologicalForms said:Thanks Lynn! Lots of imagination went into these crosses and very few of them were made without a specific goal for the improvement on the parent cultivars. That said, I harvested much less robust looking seed from my hand crosses than from my bee pollinated bloom stalks so who knows what we'll see out of these, but I'm sure it'll be an adventure.

JungleShadows said:Sol, I have the same problem as I try to be a "good bee" in my crosses but the bees set much more seed than I do. On some cultivars I've gotten so few seed from hand crosses that I take what the bees give me. On these cultivars even they aren't too good at setting seed!

Am sure it's a question of not getting the stigmas at the right stage. I generally hit them with pollen on two days. Some parents set seed so easily, others not so much. Some of these may have narrower windows of opportunity for a succesful pollination. In irises, I've found that actually forcing pollen on the stigmatic lip before the flower fully opens actually works better than letting it open. It may be having pollen on the stigma prior to the receptive stage might be a better approach with semps too as this will catch a receptive stage. Will test that idea a bit this season.

Kevin

JungleShadows said:Sol, Definitely true for the heuffs. They HATE to self pollinate and the rollers are similar. From the heuff selfings, I get a very few seed relative to the bees. However, this is one of the few ways that I can recover the recessives hidden in these plants. With the rollers, I've gotten leaf width up and increased purple coloration that hasn't occurred in the wild or in open pollinated seeds. Both of these are diploids so recovering recessives is much easier than with the tetraploids.

In some plants there is a complete block to self-pollination and the heufs and rollers have it to a degree. The other semops don't prefer it but are not as resistant to it.

Kevin