My copy of TSI has arrived in New Zealand.
And my congratulations goes to Marty and Jan for their Morgan Wood
medal winner 'Fond Kiss' and also to Jennifer Hewitt for her BIS Dykes
medal winning Iris 'Peter Hewitt'
To Bob Hollingworth and his feature story with regards to Dykes Medals
is probably similar to the frustrations that non-American hybridisers
must feel with regards to the Morgan-Wood medal.
I was recently speaking to Gareth Winter the Editor of the Almanac,(A
iris neighbor of mine as he lives in the closest town to us) with the
subject of CAL-SIBS and how Barry Blyths daughter recently stated that
these will be the next big thing in the Iris world the SSI should be
promoting these interspecies crosses for all that it is worth. In New
Zealand we have formed a trifectia of breeders that is Myself, Eddie
Johns, and Gareth Winter to make a decent start at hybridising and
extending the range of these good looking Irises.
Gareth has some truly
amazing seedlings of PCI which can be viewed on his blog Irises and
Archives .Just check out the slide show!! Eddie Johns is getting back
to good health andhe also has a blog for his Jap's nzata@otarabirch and
of course many people have view his collection of Siberian Irises which
is a good gene pool for our endeavours. I myself is slowly building a
gene pool of Siberians and some interesting seedlings and also have a
blog Heritage Irises. Not so many features on Siberians yet as I
replanted my Siberians late last season and paid the price with limited
bloom.
The most important part of the breeding programme is the securing of a
fertile CA-Sib that was raised by Ron Busch in Christchurch plus some
of its off spring that also set seed. I am endeavouring to send these
CAL-SIB to 2012 Iris Convention in the States.
Nice to talk to you guys and Gal's again
