I thought this might be a great way for us to share our learning experiences on how to breed our very own cultivars of sempervivum.
As you can tell I am brand new to this. Oh I've harvested seeds and planted them, and did haphazard crosses. I know now that I am missing some key steps.

We have learned this week that it is important to bag our bloom stalks so the insects and wind don't take the pollen before we get out in the garden.

tcstoehr said:

Like this?
If only there were some referential material on how to do this sort of thing. You know... like a publicly available written resource of some kind.

Nice job of bagging Tim.

I took this photo this evening after using pollen from 'Gold Marie' onto a several blooms of 'Mary Beth'. Not sure if this is even a cross that would be good. Just happened that the two colonies are sitting side by side while I was trying to figure things out.
Tell me what you all see wrong with this photo?


I didn't even think of it until I got the photo onto my computer.

@JungleShadows what can you tell us about this photo, what do we need to learn?

You didn't remove the anthers! Important for plants that are self fertile!

Connie you win the gold star.
I can't believe I didn't think of that until I saw the photo up close.

I'm glad lilies are self infertile and I don't have to be too concerned about that aspect. I usually remove the anthers anyway because they can be real messy and stain clothing.

I ended up with pollen all over my fingers. Tiny golden grains.

You might want to keep an eye out on your clothes, I don't know if semp pollen makes permanent stains. Right now I have a pair of good jeans out on the fence trying to sun bleach lily stains out. I need to remember to change into my paint clothing when I go out there to work with the pollen!

Lynn,

Yes, pluck the anthers before the pollen opens on the parent you want to use as a pod parent! Luckily semps don't pollinate their own flower as the stigma is not receptive until after the pollen is gone.

No stain from the semp pollen but it's small compared to lily pollen and VERY light. I use forceps to pull the flower off the stalk, using the least motion I can. Otherwise, you distribute the pollen before you get it to the flower of choice.

OK GET CROSSING!

Kevin

I'm not using the complete flower for pollination but single or small groups of anthers. I carefully rip them out with my tweezers, carry them to the receiving flower and use the anthers as micro brushes to evenly distribute the pollen on the pistils. (Usually I don't need more than 4 filaments to impollinate one flower. Some varieties produce so much pollen that even 1 anther is more than enough).
This way I'm able to pollinate both the donor and the receptor flower which might be critical as some of the small to medium sized varieties produce very few flowers (I had some with only 3 to 4 flowers this year that I absolutely wanted to cross).
Instead of bagging them up to save the pollen I put my potted plants indoors whenever I saw that a flower was opening.
Worked fine for me. I'm always afraid to break a stalk when bagging it up. In 'Feldmeier' this would be nearly impossible with its >1/2" 'stem', but others that produce stalks of max. 1/4" diameter at > 6" length are very easy to break...

Lynn, any chance of getting the reproductive parts section of your previous Semp 101 article onto this thread to refer to whenever you guys talk about plant parts? You did a nice labeled flower parts photo.
https://garden.org/ideas/view/...

Michael,

That was my original method too but this year I must have 3 K blooming plants, including multiple stalks on some of the best parents. So I've been using one stalk for pollen and one for pods. Makes life easier. Picking the whole flower seems to give me enough pollen to pollinate quite a few flowers (i.e., it spreads better)

The bees work here extremely hard and they are having a field day with the flowers out.

A little semp honey anyone?

Kevin

Semp Honey

Here you go Bev.


Michael I don't have thousands of blooms stalks to pollinate, I am going to give your method a try.
Okay, tiny scissors, tweezers, more paper bags.
Okay, what to use for shaky hands? And bad eyesight?

I just remembered that I have head gear for beading, a great magnifying shield.
Taking out right now to play with it.

Lynn, be careful not to burn your flowers if they're in the focal point of your shield on a sunny day.
No need to cut the filaments - they break of easily if picked with the tweezers.

Thank you Mike. I will leave the scissors in the house.
I definitely don't want to look towards the sky when I have this thing on.

Oh the light is starting to shine in my brain. Thank you!

I'm sure my neighbors think the woman has gone crazy. The semps are bagged. Cut off all the other blooms that I'm sure will not be used.
We shall see what morning brings.

Way to go Julia.
I will be going out first thing in the morning to see what I can cross.

thanks for the informative pic, Lynn...and good luck tomorrow in the AM with your crossing endeavors!

I'm on my last flowers of Lion King but I've made so many crosses I'll have an acre of its seedlings! It makes so many flowers and it starts making flowers early so it can be used on a number of different things. Hopefully some will be footballs too....

Have crossed Persephone and Borscht back and forth. I know Lynn was disappointed in the Persephone kids so I'm trying to put something with lots of color on it. We'll see if that helps. I do love its shape but wish that its color didn't fade so fast. Oh well, I'll have some kids to give away if that doesn't work. Borscht is also going on a bunch of very dark semps.

Kevin

I put 'Gold Marie' on 'Mary Beth' and selfed one of my seedlings from a couple of years ago. I did put some pollen from one of my heuff seedlings onto the "Pink" seedling.