Nightlily said:If you find a chemical agent that will speed up wine-making - do you believe this would improve the product quality and customers will be interested in buying such a product?
In our part of the world more organic plant production is an issue - and not plant doping. So I do not understand your perspective - please explain why this should be desirable for garden or daylily lovers?
admmad said:@plasko20
How many seedlings of cross 3 were untreated.
How many of cross 4 were untreated?
How many of cross 5 were untreated?
How many of cross 1 were untreated and how many of cross 2 were untreated?
Nightlily said:If you find a chemical agent that will speed up wine-making - do you believe this would improve the product quality and customers will be interested in buying such a product?
In our part of the world more organic plant production is an issue - and not plant doping. So I do not understand your perspective - please explain why this should be desirable for garden or daylily lovers?
plasko20 said:
Speed of getting flowers to cross with or determine which are good seedlings vs. ugly seedlings is more desirable (to me) than waiting extra years to see the same results. If you are making a multi-cross plant, it may then take you 5 years instead of 15. E.g. right now on the LA are seeds going for hundreds of dollars, from various crosses. Now imagine you can get those crosses earlier, and in greater numbers, before all your competitors.
As I mentioned in my initial post, this is about speed.
plasko20 said:
Also, there are agents that are used today to speed up wine-making. By the professionals. Do they improve the quality? I highly doubt it.
.....Do they get the identical quality, but at a shorter time? Yes. ....
plasko20 said:
Organic plant production is a fantastic ideal to strive for. But I doubt we would last long without anti-fungal agents, or insecticides in the armory. I do try and use neem oil (considered organic) where possible, but it is just not as good (although gives leaves a great healthy sheen). I have bought ladybugs to eat aphids, but they fly away in a few days. I also admit to using chemical fertilizers (e.g. miracle grow) as well as organic composts. I would like to be more like you. But my success rate is low with organic-only. [Added later: Just reading about daylily leaf-streak, they advise not to use organic composts as the fungi spread through it like wildfire, and it is used as a vector to infect all surrounding plants. That would be one disadvantage of organic, I imagine].
And when you do not have a lot of space, like me, you need results fast so you can toss unwanted seedlings and make room for fresh ones. With a faster turnover rate (e.g. tossing 3 of every 5 seedlings) I would be able to keep growing fresh crosses instead of grinding to a halt for several years, then starting again, while I waited.
Unlike so many, I do not have entire fields of space to play with. Space is prime real-estate.
I hope this helps answer your query.
Nightlily said:
Thanks for this explanation. Speed to see a pretty face - but is the same plant as pretty as your doped seedling, when you sell it and it's planted in a garden?
How can you be sure that this treatment does not change things like flowering time, bud count, branching or scape height? How will you be able to guarantee quality?
I'm crossing for season extenders (extra early and late/very late flowering time) - I would not be able to identify if my seedlings bring me closer to my hybridizing goals - for me just a pretty face is not enough.
This i highly doubt - but we in Europe have different food quality standards - e.g. it is not allowed to sell beef or milk products with hormone residuals from 'special feed'.
I completely understand your point of view, our garden is small (the small seedlingsgarden is not on our own land) and due to our poor soil I use granulated fertilizer in my garden too, but ours is an organic one. And if no organic method works against a pest I use a special pesticide against it.
For me there is a difference between giving my plants the best conditions to grow and forcing them with doping substances to unnatural behavior.
plasko20 said:
I do understand exactly where you are coming from. But flowering is not an unnatural behavior, it is what they are supposed to do. Just a wee bit sooner. As for your other questions regarding long-term consequences, you have a great point. That is a complete unknown. Anything could happen, perhaps they might all die during winter because I messed with their homeostasis, who knows. But that cannot be answered without continued testing and observation.
However, if humanity relied on tried-and-tested we would still be living in caves and would have never gone to the moon. And, daylilies aside, at least for crop biology we need to find novel ways to increase crop densities to feed the millions of new mouths appearing on the planet every year as we breed unfettered like rats. So, intensive plant-research (including genetically-modified crops) is a must or mass starvation will soon occur. If we can gain the knowledge from crop research and then apply it to decorative vanity plants like daylilies, then we have lost nothing. I got the idea for the GA experiment after reading about it being used to increase commercial tomato harvests. I do see my garden as a fun laboratory as well as a pretty thing to look at. For example, just last year I got a fruit tree where branches from 5 different types of fruit were all grafted to the same trunk. I am excited to see it progress. It packs 5 trees into the space of just one, so is a massive space-saver (80% space saved). I have also tried grafting myself, trying to fuse 2 different types of magnolia together so the tree will flower in both yellow and pink (not successful yet), as well as performing experiments with rooting various types of cuttings, etc.
I think gardeners were the first scientists. Indeed, the monk Gregor Mendel is famous in history for his genetics research using pea plants in the 1800s. He is an inspiration.
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.
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.