RE HYB: Trial Gardens

For me in my harsh climate, I evaluate for good performance as well as beauty, flower stock etc.
Plants are evaluated not just when they bloom but also when they are transplanted. If at the time of moving, if the foliage/increase looks bad, they are discarded without consideration of their exceptionallity (some exceptions for colour or pattern breaks). Some plants that seem to do well don't transplant well and there is a lot of losses with transplanting. These are dismissed for further consideration.

As I'm most concerned re cold climate dependability, I only consider how well they do in cold climates. We are Canada zone 5 here, about equivalent to USA ratings of 3. Bloom time for TBs is peak about June 15th to give an idea.

New plants have limited numbers so sending to a lot of gardens is not an option. As I'm not concerned re warm weather climate survivability, I would not likely sent to a hot climate just for an evaluation. I depend a lot on the Loomis Trial garden to help me select the best seedlings as they are also a cold climate area. I know they don't have ideal care etc, but having seen how plants are grown in Florence trial gardens,and having seen how they are grown in Loomis gardens,  I can say that they have a fairer evaluation, especially as each group of plants are  grown in the same beds and have the same treatment. 

As an aside, once they survive my evaluation and my garden they seem to be able to survive everywere and its  only rarely that I hear of a problem and then its seems to be only a rare event. My guarantee of first year survival ensures I get feedback, which helps.

I find that there are always superior performers in the garden in terms of plant growth and performance. This year I'm making notes on these plants and trying to find out were I can make good crosses with them.

An example of superior performance with my intros is Garden Bride. Loomis winner in 2004 when they had very poor flowering. It scored over 80 points and second place had 65 points, not even close. This is a plant which will likely never get any AIS awards as it is not an attention getter. An extreemly nice ruffled white with great branching and bud count, but not an attention grabber, just a superior plant with excellent flowers and performance and superior cold weather performance. Certainly one I have been using to try to get this performance and reliabilty into other colour types. Certainly need this performance in deep yellows, pinks, oranges etc.

Chuck Chapman Guelph, Ontario, Canada

__________________________________________________________________
Switch to Netscape Internet Service.
As low as $9.95 a month -- Sign up today at http://isp.netscape.com/register

Netscape. Just the Net You Need.

New! Netscape Toolbar for Internet Explorer
Search from anywhere on the Web and block those annoying pop-ups.
Download now at http://channels.netscape.com/ns/search/install.jsp

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To sign-off this list, send email to majordomo@hort.net with the
message text UNSUBSCRIBE IRIS
Other Mailing lists | Author Index | Date Index | Subject Index | Thread Index