Re: CULT:Early Season

That was one of those posts I wished I hadn't sent the minute I hit the send key. After all, you are going to be selecting for a <lot> of disease resistance just by growing your seedlings in Atlanta! And here I am, trying to select for disease resistance, and one of my 'super tough' seedlings has already rotted for you, not just once, but twice! So ignore that comment...after all, I don't really encourage competition for the worst iris disease burden trial garden!
I do hope if you get some strong everbloomers (summer rebloomers) from that cross with reasonably good growth, stalks, substance, width, bloom size, and height you will consider introducing them even if they aren't colors or patterns you want. Some of us would buy them for breeding potential.
As for early season - it isn't supposed to really cool off much for another week. Just hoping we don't go from two weeks in the 80s F down to the 20s. At least it's not usual to get temperatures in the mid to low 20s in April here, but we could still have killing freezes for several more weeks. Saw the first I. germanica stalk, one bud showing color, the other day, and one TB - HEMSTITCHED - with a stalk up in the main 'garden' (iris rows). Still no SDBs blooming. Irises don't seem to be much ahead of schedule here, in spite of the high daytime temperatures. Nights have been cool (40s & low 50s) until the last few days when clouds moved in.
We are around 10 inches below average for the year in rainfall so far. Very dry for us, & heat is making it worse. 
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Both are above average growers for me and Matrix always reblooms a bit too late here.  The soil they are in is hardly what one might call nice (rocks and sandy silt over a layer of clay), but they do grow just fine.  Some varieties do have trouble and I note that and move them to the garden with better soil.

Just a short synopsis of the cross performance.  I have over 100 seedlings from Golden Immortal x Matrix cross so I should get a few good ones.  They germed well and the seedlings were better than most from the start.  About half have nice foliage, broad and green and straight.  Some foliage might actually be too broad but I'll wait to decide on that.  Most are vigorous or moderately so.  About half have PBF and some strikingly so.  Two started to bloom last fall and dug them up to bring inside - they were not particularly nice flowers but have saved them for comparison next year.  There are about six that are apparently rebloomers (due to the EARLY Spring bloom in comparison to the other TB's) and are about 2 weeks from blooming with slightly stunted stalks with some frost damage that probably occured about a month ago when the stalks were merely a glint in the plant's nodes.

I am hoping for better carotenoid plicatas similar to Light Beam or Champaign Time with better flower form, foliage and growth.  It looks like I have the plant characteristics down and just time to choose flowers and fertility.
I have not observed any significant disease resitance in my seedlings and there are others working on it. For me to breed for it I have to be able to observe it. On the flip side I don't coddle my seedlings. If they don't survive on their own without the rain and watering during lengthy dry periods and some fertilizer they will die. My plants are strong on their own as they should be. I have always had leaf spot and managed to control it with fungicides. One year my choice of surfactants (dish soap) I believe caused rot of the emrging leaf blade then transmitted down through the fan into the rhizome. 
I almost had the leaf spot beat last year with the dry Spring and then my sprayer broke and it took off like wildfire at the beginning of Summer when the rains picked up.
I have back-up this year and it is a dry Spring again. Maybe once I have the leaf spot under control I might be observe how the plants behave without the copious fungicide applications and I can see more differences amoung them. Not a luxury I have right now. 

Paul Archer
Raleigh, NC



--
Linda Mann east Tennessee USA zone 7/8
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