We have our tags ready to go. I try to do so much in a very short time. I know it may not make sense but I may have 15 -30 minutes of daylight before I have to head off to work, I can make lots of crosses if I just dab pollen, where I could so many fewer by dabbing and tagging. So many great flowers are made from the greatest parent called Unknown.
We do grow 800+ registered DLs and thousands of seedling and from furthest points our beds are maybe 200 yards distance. Some mornings I have so little time I can't even walk all the beds. Ashton sends me texts of flowers I did not get to see.
Ashton suggests that I start tagging everything and that way we will have less seeds. Also I don't go back and repeat what I did in previous seasons. So even if I make a great seedling, I don't look to go back and repeat the same cross. I am moving on to new pollen parents and using our seedlings.
I use colored paper clips and do double clips for additional colors. This year, I came up with something new that I like. With multiple hybridizers working around here certain colors get used and we run out of yellow or white clips when for example white is a dip and tet pollen parent and double white is a dip and tet parent. Also I do one time crosses or very few using a pollen parent. So rather than doing bread clip types of hang tags which don't stay on in our wind, I found that the dollar store has 400 colored beads for $1. They hold their color in the sun and give me lots of added color options to use as many pollen parents as I want.
Since I have a program, I just need to use it and mark them all.
