HYB: seedling report (long)

 
In the hope that we have seen the last killer 110° day, I counted all of
this year’s seedlings that still showed any green.  Out of the original
396, I now have about 50, and some of these are in such bad shape that I
doubt they will ever make it.  The ones still alive are scarcely bigger
than when they were planted last April.  The ones that grew well to
eight or ten inches tall, fell over with the same stinky rot that has
afflicted the adults in the guest bed.  With cooler weather I expect the
survivors to grow and eventually recover.
 
Last year I only had two pods of seeds to plant, which I put in a thirty
foot row and suspended a shade  cover six feet above it.  In that row I
never lost a one.  In September, when they started suffering from lack
of sunlight, I took the shade screen down.  This summer I have had no
rot at all in that row, and two thirds of the irises made first year
bloom.  This year with a much bigger bed, I didn’t invest the time and
money to build a shade cover over it.  It is very expensive.
 
There are differences in the survival rate of the different crosses.
The best one, about 50%, was from my most unlikely one, Living Picture X
Joaquin Lady.  Both parents are not good growers here, but at least they
haven’t rotted.  The worst was Pond Lily X Celebration Song.  I lost
100% of that one.  In fact, that was a cross I wouldn’t try again.  The
seedlings seemed weak and somewhat deformed from their first sprouting.
I have a few other Pond Lily seedlings out there.  Maybe some of them
will make it.  The Romantic Evening and Noreen’s Delight seedlings have
mostly died.  I have a few healthy looking ones from Anna Belle Babson X
Celebration Song.  Celebration Song left my garden via bloomout this
year.  
 
Because I don’t want death in the nursery like this again, I am going to
start germinating my seeds in the fall and planting them before cold
weather.  I took one of this summer’s pods, dried the seeds, soaked them
in mid-July and refrigerated them until this morning.  They were tiny
little things from an experimental pod on one of my first year
seedlings.  I didn’t really expect them to grow, but when I took them
out of the refrigerator this morning, almost all of them were already
sprouting.  They got carefully potted and as it’s still to hot to put
them outside even in the shade, they are sitting on my kitchen counter
with the hope that I can set them in the garden by the first of
November.  I will cover them with a row cover to protect from winter
chill and see what will happen then. 
 
Francelle Edwards    Glendale,  AZ   Zone 9  
 


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