Viewing post #2572144 by Nightlily

plasko20 said:Also, Sue I have been pondering your own problem in developing extra-late blooming daylilies.
The best chances to do this would perhaps be to cross as many late or very-late as you can. However, the current latest to bloom would not develop pods in time before the cold comes and kills them.
This means either doing the crosses indoors in a controlled environment to give the pods enough time to develop. Or you can "tent" your crosses just using a regular pop-up tent, which would keep the temperature warmer for longer (a few extra weeks to a month, perhaps) to protect from the cold. Then you may be able to harvest the seeds that you were unable to before, which would be much more likely to have extra-late seedlings develop.

I can tell you out of about 8 years working on this issue that this will not bring you beautiful modern late and very late seedlings within years - you would need to work for decades to catch up with the cutting edge midseason daylilies available now.

It works much better to freeze the best midseason pollen you can get and use it for crossing in August or September (my job in these days now - every morning I have to decide which pollen I have to bring to the seedlings garden, usually about 8-10 different ones). Usually at least one of the seedlings out of such crosses flowers late/very late and opens perfectly after cold nights - and if I'm lucky it's a beautiful one.

plasko20 said:Not sure if this counts as manipulating nature or the environment to get your ends. But it seems the most logical to get extra-late blooming seedlings in your climate, is to push to the extreme limits for pod collection.

Pods are not the problem here - the latest cultivars I was able to buy start here end of August - if I use the first flowers I can easily cross whatever I like - the pods ripe untill it's getting frosty (in our region in November or December).

Late/very late flowering daylilies are usually not fast growing - their 'lazyness' in producing scapes and buds and finally flowering at the end of the season is often due to a slower metabolism and for me it makes no sense to speed them up with a chemical agent - I will loose the information if a seedling has inherited the desired flower time too.