HYB: winter planning

As I scratch my head over this year's results, trying to plan for spring pollen daubing, I wonder how the rest of you go about this? 

Here's what I do
1) make sure I have pedigrees for everything I might consider using, with rebloom potential, neglecta/amoenas, tangerine factor, colors/patterns noted.
2) update notes on germination and survival rates for various types of crosses & look for possible patterns of successes & failure. As we all keep saying, anything can happen in a particular cross, & while I will continue to experiment with low survival crosses, I don't want them <all> to be that way!
3) review types of crosses I've tried in relation to my goals - look for total failures (either seedlings were not healthy enough, or blooms were dreadful (worse than both parents), or the cross didn't give the type of result I hoped for, or crosses failed. Look for patterns of failure & decide if I want to try some different combinations using the same group of parents, mix in additional parents, or try something totally different to try for the same goal, <or> if I want to abandon that whole approach for this breeding season (i.e., wait to see if something in the seedling patch or new cultivars might give a better chance in the future).
4) look at surviving 'junk'/experimental crosses to see if there is anything possibly worth pursuing. Good example of this is the IC1 X "Pretty Baby" cross that produced all those surprise rebloomers. They are BB, which I do <not> want to be working with, but some interesting potential there. Also see if junk/experiments give me some insight into what might work or not work for other types of crosses (i.e., messy hafts)
5) make a spreadsheet or lists of potential parents and which goals they would (hopefully) be working towards. Look for missing types of parents I need to reach goals, try to figure out whether or not I may have something that will work, or if I need to go shopping <g> Also look for <several> potential crosses that will advance towards each goal.
From the above, I can usually make a list of the crosses I want to try. Once bloom season is here, some of these will obviously be bad choices when I see the plants in bloom, and a lot (most) of the crosses I actually make will not be the ones I plan. But all the planning helps me fix goals and approaches and needed information in my mind ahead of time.
For me, the most difficult part of all of this comes during actual daubing season, when my curiosity gets the best of me and I want to see what <every> possible combination will produce! 
--
Linda Mann east Tennessee USA zone 7/8
East Tennessee Iris Society <http://www.korrnet.org/etis>
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