HYB: Getting ahead of the "big guys"

Some rather famous hybridizers were "backyard gardeners" including David Hall,
for example.  He, and a number of others like him did not raise thousands or
tens of thousands of seedlings per year.

There is one thing in common among those small time hybridizers that made it
big, however.  Judging from published pedigrees something of a formula comes
to mind that describes what they did:

1) select out the highest quality relatively new parents in three or four
distinctly different types/colors/lines--for example, best blue, best pink,
best luminata, best rebloomer or space ager.

2) make crosses among them in as many different combinations as you have room
to plant

3) select out the best of the seedlings ignoring color for the moment--but the
best for vigor, branching, bud count and so on--, then get rid of the rest

4) make crosses among them in as many combinations as possible, selecting the
best of the best in the same way as in 3

5) then inbreed the progeny staying as tightly focussed on a single objective
as possible.

After a number of generations, what you have has never existed before--but add
color--brilliance, clarity and character--to the selection critera, and
continue to stay focused.

Suppose you started out with Tasco's FIRST WAVE, a Keppel tangerine bearded
Luminata, a Sutton family wide-hafted flounced blue such as Mike's BOTTOMS UP
and a Ghio pink.  In the first generation or two you might have some pretty
awful stuff, but the best of them crossed back and forth in a few generations
are likely to have produced some rather different seedlings with some distict
qualities combined.in unique ways in some pretty classy offspring.

It doesn't take ten thousand seedlings a year to do this.  Especially true
will be the observation that what you have isn't "just another...." whatever.

The crosses that produced PINNACLE, GRACIE PFOST, NEW MOON, and DR. WANLASS
started out following a pattern like this and only got to step three or so
before they made big-time iris history.   David Hall's pinks followed a
pattern like this over numerous generations.

As Rosalie and others pointed out, we aren't "there" yet--there's still a lot
of room for improvement, especially in the areas of tough survivability and
perpetual blooming--objectives we can (and are) working toward.

Neil Mogensen   z  7  western NC

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