I am harvesting some seed pods now and noticing a few trends regarding which pod/pollen parents were the most fertile in terms of setting pods and number of seeds per pod.
Canadian Border Patrol and Topgun's Verna Jean were by far my most fertile about setting pods. I am using these seeds to practice different germination and seedling growing techniques this winter. Canadian Border Patrol seemed to have more seeds per pod than any of my other plants regardless of the pollen parent.
Of my nicer cultivars, Mackenzie's Magic, Awesome Artist and Moments Rich In Blessing have been pretty good pod setters. On the opposite end, The Flower Formerly Known as Griff, Peacock Candy, Lilac Queen, and Shamrock Shore would not set pods for me at all this year (or they set and then aborted). God Save the Queen only set one pod crossed with itself (I was trying to follow the suggestion to use that to get the plant going...it didn't seem to work) but I got 11 fat, healthy seeds form it. Lurch, Eye Catching, and Sacred Ibis set a few pods each but they were pretty finicky.
As pollen parents, God Save the Queen did pretty well and pods fertilized with it averaged around 9 seeds. Peacock Candy wasn't too great as a pollen parent and pods fertilized with it averaged around 5 seeds. Moments Rick in Blessing and Rincon Del Mar have been really great as pollen parents at setting pods but I haven't harvested pods set by them yet as they are my later bloomers here.
How about everyone else? What trends have you noticed?
