Re: CULT: Cyber trial gardens

Linda: You noted that several people commented that the information noted in your poll was not useful to them. I agree. Without some objective parameters such as branching, bud count, stalk height, flowers size, purple based foliage, etc. the survey is of value only to those who live in the Death Zone. Most of us will experience some intermediate measure of success. Again, I suspect it is of more value to know what survives and how well than what died. Losses can be due to many factors and may not give the best indication of performance. To use death as a parameter the plant would have to be tried several times. 


Linda Mann <lmann@volfirst.net> wrote:Char, George - back in 2002, there was some initial enthusiasm for
compiling information on survival of AIS award winners in Region 7.
Nine people in Kentucky, Tennessee and "Baja" Region 7 (Mississippi)
went over the entire list of AM & HM winners for 1999 thru 2002. Eight
folks ranked HMs and an additional person added info on AMs

I summarized the info and published a little article in the Region 7
newsletter. It seemed to fall into a vacuum - no enthusiasm at all for
continuing, so I dropped it.

To keep it as simple as possible and minimize subjective judgements, I
tried to limit evaluation to only a few parameters - whether or not the
cultivar dies, lives but bloom is usually frozen out or otherwise
affected, lives and blooms normally. Some folks discarded cultivars,
usually due to 'near death', so I added a category between 'dead' and
'lives' for discarded ones.

Several participants felt the comparison would only be useful to them if
more details were added (tho not as many as have been discussed here).

Results were interesting to me, but apparently not interesting enough to
anybody else to make it worth the trouble. :-( The most interesting
thing that I saw is something we've all observed - some cultivars did
well for just about all the folks who had grown it, some cultivars had
died for just about all participants, and some did well for some and
died for others, with no apparent pattern in where that happened.

Perhaps something like that on a national level would gain some
momentum? Like club display gardens, every one of us has a trial garden
and there is a ton of useful information from each of our gardens.

In any case, I still have the Excel file. Originally, I was only going
to share it with folks who participated and hybridizers, but since
we dropped it, be glad to share with whoever wants it.

I got requests for the information from hybridizers, other than
those in this region (i.e., those who sent data).

--
Linda Mann east Tennessee USA zone 7/8
East Tennessee Iris Society 
American Iris Society web site 
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