Blueberry Shortcake and its progeny are absolutely gorgeous. I want them all!

I found a list of Brad's named registrations at https://wiki.irises.org/Main/B... . I clicked on the link for each named iris, and I loved them all, but Mango Mojito is simply astonishing! Love the color and the ruffles.

Tropical Vibes - I am dead!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Good questions re getting someone else to introduce your registrations (not that I have any). I've long wondered about that myself.

Poly.. I am not much of a smeller normally get a good whiff when the 1st few open for the year and then in looking at colors .. although I do like it when we find one with a unique scent.

Laurie.. The one you picked is probably my favorite of the bunch it blooms on the shorter side which I like and something about those colors together in the garden always stops and makes me admire it.

Lyn.. I don't have answers on a lot of your questions I didn't reach out to anyone else Schreiner's was the only one I wanted to work with they are friends that we have visited every bloom season for many years and there family has been very kind to me.
Ray before he retired used to spend hours walking me through there seedlings every spring and Steve would greet me with a smile every time we ran into each other .. I am absolutely thrilled that they were willing to take on my plants and introduce them as they certainly don't need mine there are over 100 acres of iris there that get dug/ and divided every year its a great feeling to know some of my plants are growing at Schreiners and How cool is it to maybe get a couple of my own in there catalog there customer service is 1st class, they ship to other countries so friends in other countries will be able to get them and the only thing I have to worry about is hybridizing which is all I want to do ..

I never intended to do anything commercial when I started pollen daubing the plants have always been for my own entertainment but there is a lot of time and expense now to growing out thousands of seedlings every year and digging and moving them the future will require more expensive equipment and a greenhouse to make things more efficient so any help I can get to pay for some it will be great !

On quanities of plants I think most commercial growers would want 100 with Schreiners its much more they don't like to sell out of plants and disappoint people so they want lots as they have such a huge customer base they are the worlds largest commercial supplier most of the bigger box stores are getting plants from them thought it would be cool one day to run into Home Depot for work for parts and maybe find one of my iris blooming in the garden center They will be the only supplier for my plants for as long as they will do them..


Tom..I haven't done much with many of them but this 1st seedling was neat with the lined pattern it was nicknamed the Sergey Look for the yellow undertones in it but Blues have been tough to make progress since those 2 original crosses the other seedlings shown are attempts to get some different Blue material with modern form they all have it in the pedigree but will need to keep working them
19-48 (Foreign Agent x 16-48(Magnanimous x Blueberry Shortcake)
A


E


20-97 Moment to Savour X 13-97 (Ride The Waves X My Beloved)
A


20-72 My Lady's Manor X Moment To Savour
A

B

C


21-165 (Pia Bay X Musicality)
A

B

Thanks for the answers, Brad. Just love Sergey Look. Definitely on my wish list. Sergey is a big favorite of mine.

Sergey Look is nice, maybe it would grow here, as Sergey has failed 3 times for me, it always dies over the first winter. I've quit trying, guess it doesn't like my climate.

20-97 Moment to Savour X 13-97 (Ride The Waves X My Beloved) A is sure a lovely lavender with such nice ruffles and form.

So sorry Sergey didn't grow for you. Clearly there is more to it than climate zone - you and Brad are both in 5b. I had in one location and it didn't bloom. Moved both it and Captain Thunderbolt to a new area I cleared where the soil is sandier . The ground is sloped so it is extremely well drained (and maybe a little sunnier) and both took off. In the first location, they were next to Wintry Sky, which was thriving there.

Adding this comment later - the soil in the first location was what I considered my best soil - it had been an organic veg garden for years so it was rich and loamy. But of course for veg, drainage and rot are not an issue - they're often not even in the ground here when iris season starts and they're compost by winter, and soil that holds water is the name of the game for veg.

tveguy3 said: Sergey Look is nice, maybe it would grow here, as Sergey has failed 3 times for me, it always dies over the first winter. I've quit trying, guess it doesn't like my climate.

20-97 Moment to Savour X 13-97 (Ride The Waves X My Beloved) A is sure a lovely lavender with such nice ruffles and form.

Seeing all of Brad's iris and their parentage, and hearing about the thousands (yikes) of seedlings he has planted, strikes me how much of hybridizing is a genetic roulette. Some iris have a long pedigree, so literally decades have gone into the final flower (many of Ghio's are like this) while others are just a simple cross, a great piece of genetic good fortune that arrives in a single season. So in a single cross, there are what - thousands, millions, billions - of possible outcomes?

Sometimes I look at the parents of an iris and it seems that one can get a sense of what they were trying for. Other times, the parents are not at all what one would expect.

So Brad, for example your Smoke and Thunder X Class Ring - you've registered three gorgeous and very different from each other iris. How many seeds did you plant in order to get three you wanted to preserve (or maybe you have even more)? It seems that your efforts with the blues involved thousands of seeds, though Blueberry Shortcake was also the result of 1st generation success.

Which of the various germination methods that people have shared here do you use? I've got no choice but to plant seeds outside in pots. On my first try (22 cross) last year I only had 4 out of 32 seeds come up. People have said hang onto them because sometimes it takes two cycles. What do you think?

I ask because of something I've noticed. The four seeds didn't come up all on the same day, it was one, then another, then another a few days apart. Even though it was only a few days, the first to emerge has remained the biggest and put out the most increases, and the last two are the smallest still. I'm wondering if you've noticed anything like that, and whether one can infer anything about the plant by that - such as it will a vigorous plant? They were literally sown inches from each other in exactly the same soil so the growth differences must be inborn characteristics of each seed, no?

I haven't seen bloom (fingers crossed for spring) so I can't draw any conclusions about that.

Who likes Plicata's and Luminata's ? They have been my favorite groups to work with the past couple years if your looking for something different and unique try crossing Plic's together it will amaze you the color and patterns that come from there crosses they can be very rewarding A good portion of them bloom early here and they can really light the garden up with color a perfect way to kick off the TB season.

This cross was a good mixture of the 2 parents and gave me some very bright and fun colors to work with you can see from the group pictures how they look in the garden at the start of the season Fun !

19-155(Front of the line x Fire Danger)
A

B


C

D

E

F

G

Love the progeny of 19-155(Front of the line x Fire Danger), particularly A, C, and E. Any plans to introduce them?

I like those three also, but I also like G and D. Nice group of seedlings!

ARUBA1334 said:


19-155(Front of the line x Fire Danger)
A

This one is gorgeous. Do you have any notes on fragrance? I hope it makes introduction some day.

Daisy.. I love the color of Mango Mojito when the sun hits it just right it opens with the line and speckle pattern on the falls as it does come from Joe's lines ..I like to think of it as a tropical orange which are rare I get lots of muted oranges/peaches but not the bright ones that's what I'm after

Tom.. It has been tough to get much done with it Sergey grows fine but is not a steady bloomer every year but incredible in Oregon really stands out in the rows very different colors and love how it fades on a stem very unique. I do have some good seedlings from it but not the easiest of parents either have made lots of crosses with it and most don't take.

Andrea.. There still pretty new at this point but definitely a couple of them check all the boxes but for plants Im guessing there maybe 10-12 of some of them others maybe less so will be quite a while before they get to that point .. the process I use is when a seedling blooms and its marked to save that 1st year its normally dug and divided, lined out and let set for 2 years so I can see numerous plants of the seedling in a 2 year clump.. if its re selected again from there.. the process repeats dig/ divide/ line out let set for another 2 years and then hopefully make a choice to keep going with it or discard on some plants that increase extremely fast might have enough in 6 years but others may take a few more our growing season is much shorter then the west coast and winters can be brutal..

Lyn.. Hybridizing is a bit like that anymore the pedigrees are complex and if your using the newest of plants anything is possible I do make some crosses looking for colors but mostly breed the form and stalks and select the colors from what blooms from there.

On the 12-12 cross you asked about it is a good example of just that both parents are a heavy mix of Barry Blyth plants and you can get anything from his when they bloomed I was amazed at all the different color variations and patterns that came out of it don't remember the exact number but probably 60-70 bloomed and I kept 15 or so for awhile all were good growers but have now narrowed it down to the 3 that were named and 1 more that is a good possibility we will go through all of them soon

On the seeds mine are greenhouse grown so things are done to get them prepared for that .. to get them to germinate you need to get the seed inhibitor off of them I put mine in the jewelry mesh bags that are bought on amazon and soak them in a couple 5 gallon buckets of water for 2 weeks .. water is dumped every few days and repeated they are then wrapped in a paper towel and baggie placed in the fridge until there ready to plant mine go to the greenhouse the 1st week in January before we leave for vacation and will start to germinate in February when the heat gets cranked up by mid march when its 90's in there they really pop .. the heat is what brings them on there watered and fertilized just like the other annuals growing in there and by the time I get them out of there and planted in May they have excellent root structures and nice little bulbs to line out this helps speed the process up so I can see many more of them bloom the following spring.
This process can be done in a heated garage or basement I found this out the hard way in 2022 we got back March 4th from vacation and the next day a tornado hit and destroyed the greenhouse where my seeds were growing .. got the call from friends at 930 at night that it got leveled but my pots were fine as they were under the benchs and not affected but you better come get them now if you want them to live its going to be 20 degrees tonight welcome back to Iowa so I moved truckloads of plants to my garage that night luckily its heated so we were able to keep them alive and I then invested in some of the High tech Led grow lights and kept them going until May .. your now looking at seedling pictures from some of those pots they were my 21 crosses so it can be done that way too but I was not happy with the propane bill.

On holding pots over I have done that and yes they will germinate if you have the patience when I make my tags for the pots its noted with the cross number and number of seeds so when planting if the cross is something I think will be really good and less then half germinate I may hold it but rare most of the time I dump the pot right after the nametag and let them germinate in the ground between Dad and I we can have over 300 crosses some years and I don't like to babysit pots not enough hours in the day during summer months .. Hope this helps with yours even if you put them in pots and set them outside soak them for a couple weeks 1st to get seed inhibitor off you will have more luck.




Another very early seedling group that were bright that I liked
21-227 (Fire Danger X Volcanic Glow)
A

B

C

D

ARUBA1334 said: Wow Thanks for all the wonderful compliments on the seedlings I will have more time tomorrow to get in depth on my thoughts on some of them they are proving to be interesting parents and wanted to show what bloomed this past spring from them


20-133 (17-69A x 16-83B Star Turn X 13-50B (Just Witchery X Magical)
A

B

C



21-101 (19-84F x Paia Bay)
A

B

C

D



21-161 (19-84E X Musicality)

Brad, all of these are simply amazing. I love A (20-133 (17-69A x 16-83B Star Turn X 13-50B (Just Witchery X Magical)). I do hope this one gets introduced someday. I'm from the old group of ATP, I don't post much any more but when I saw your new thread I was excited to see all of your pictures, progress, and that you will be introducing your creations through Schreiner's Iris Gardens.

Front of the line seems to have had the greatest influence on the offspring. I really like B and G from that group, and A from the Fire Danger X Volcanic Glow cross.

From Front of the line and Fire Danger,I like B and E.
And Fire Danger and Volcanic Glow,I like D, but would like to see it fully open to really know.

Brad for taking the time to teach me! I've already planted a bunch but I have 2 crosses still not planted so I'll try the soaking.

Have you ever tried Blushing Doll for pods?

I'm not really into "red" irises, because they all look muddy to me, but I like D the best of that lot. Maybe it's just because I am partial to lavenders and purples, but I do think it has an interesting color combination.