Re: CULT: bloomstalks showing

You've been so quiet since that last bad freeze, I was starting to worry
about you Neil - good to hear you are going to get some bloom.

Your problem with ever bigger clumps of unbloomed seedlings is the same
one I was facing several years ago - huge, super healthy clumps of stuff
that I knew <probably> weren't worth keeping, but I hated to have gone
to all that trouble just to throw them away without ever knowing what
the blooms might have been.

That was when I decided I better give up and start covering at least my
seedling rows.  While I was at it, I wound up covering a lot of the rest
of my irises since the material comes in 100 ft by 6 foot sections. And
because I had daubed seedlings in among the storeboughts (rats!).

After I've seen them bloom once, I can get rid of the duds and let some
of the reselects get frozen a few times to weed out the ones that aren't
<purgatory-proof>.

Unless I want to make crosses with them....unfortunately, these late
freezes seem to mess up fertility, at least in the first blooms, even
though they may look normal. Covering seems to help.

<Very few of my seedlings from pollenizations three years ago show any
sign of
                   blooming.  I was counting on being able to cull out
those areas--and now don't
                   know whether to assume the unbloomed will ever bloom
here, having failed to do
                   so two years running, toss and go on--or give them
one more chance.  I might
                   get a stalk or two from the crosses two years
ago--maybe.  I may get surprised
                   yet with late stalks forming.  Sure not counting on
it though.>
                   Neil Mogensen   z  somewhere between 7 and
Iris-Purgatory if not -Hell  in
                   western NC>

--
Linda Mann east Tennessee USA zone 7/8
East Tennessee Iris Society <http://www.korrnet.org/etis>
American Iris Society web site <http://www.irises.org>
talk archives: <http://www.hort.net/lists/iris-talk/>
photos archives: <http://www.hort.net/lists/iris-photos/>
online R&I <http://www.irisregister.com>

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