Seed pod on Immortality Iris

Slapped up the 13th Purple Mom/Black Dad flower that came up. You can find it here: Cross-Pollinated Bearded Iris (Black and Purple)

05/19/13 - Seed pod - Immortality/(Purple Mom x Black Dad 1st)

Geez, that sucker is huge! It just keeps swelling! It's the only seed pod to take so I am rooting for viable seeds inside. The second Immortality seed pod stayed relatively small before it quickly withered away.

Documenting the crossed bearded irises

You know, I think crossing bearded irises might be more fun than crossing amaryllis/hippeastrum... I started a new 'page' on this blog so that I could keep all the results of my crossed bearded irises in one area.

Cross-Pollinated Bearded Iris (Black and Purple)

There's about 3 more coming up for Purple Mom/Black Dad and 1 more coming up for Black Mom/Purple Dad. It's been really interesting to see the results this spring, especially one that popped out with an almost pastel purple.

05/05/13 - 7th

I was told not to get attached to any of the flowers that came up this spring because chances are there aren't any rhizomes to carry on the legacy. Hard to say because they've been growing non-stop since January of 2012, but on closer look, most of the plants are by themselves with no extra plants coming off them. The many that haven't bloomed do have extra rhizomes shooting off the main leaves.

A friend asked me if it bothers me that most of these are one-pop-shots, never to come around again. Nah... It is interesting to see what can happen, even if they never come around again.

This whole experience taught me that you can study up on everything and still be surprised. I was under the impression that bearded iris are very difficult to germinate and that many might wait a year, two years, up to 10 years before they'll decide to germinate; mine exploded after being exposed to just one frost during a mild winter. Just everywhere! pifpifpfpifpifpofpopifpifpifipopifpifpifopipop! I was under the impression that most would be ugly to look at and that I'll most likely trash them but keep one or two I'd like; the ones that have come up, I think, are pretty neat to look at. I haven't wanted to trash any of them yet.

The one thing that did turn out to be utterly true is that every seed really is different. It is beyond incredible how different they are. Some flowers came out really big on tall stalks, some flowers came out small on short stalks, etc.

I have tried my best to cross-pollinate a lot of the siblings. I remember reading somewhere that crossing the siblings would cause recessive traits to most likely pop out in the children. I haven't had a pod take yet. I've crossed PM/BD siblings with each other, I crossed BM/PD siblings with each other, I crossed PM/BD with BM/PD and vice versa...  I'm crossing as fast as I can but they're failing just as fast as they can, too. What does surprise me is that the "Immortality" iris (Assuming it's Immortality) has two seed pods.

I couldn't get any pollen off this plant and when I did a search, I found one person that said they could never get pollen off it and they could never get it to set pods either. The top pod was pollinated with the first PM/BD that opened (You'll see it on the page I linked to). The second pod down there was pollinated with Black. I have no idea if these are balloons/air pods? Where it's swelling but there's just no seeds in there. I won't know until they open.

Loathing a garden bed

Have you ever established a garden bed and then hated it later? I am going through that right now.

The beauty that is my long amaryllis bed. I managed to weed half of the bed with the younger amaryllis seedlings. I had to climb over the little fence and stand on the wooden edges in order to bend over and work out the weeds. A huge chunk is gone. Even though I wore long sweatpants and a hoodie, four ticks still found their way to my leg.

This half of the bed is the older amaryllis and it's difficult that I can't simply stand on the wood to weed. I really shouldn't have made the bed so wide that I can't reach the other side.

It's too bad I can't simply hire a giant who can drag the bed a few feet away from the fence. The relentless vines from the woods are taking over the beds, and some have thorns so that I can't even use gloves to yank them out. If I could do this again, I would've placed the bed away from the fence so that I could control what's going on around all four edges of it.

I think what I have to do is cut out little square holes in the bed and slide in square stepping stones. That way I can step on it and yank out weeds before they can get too established.

Or, I may have to actually face the idea that come this fall, I might have to dig the whole shebang up and relocate it. I don't know. I just know that this is unacceptable how it is.

Orange-tipped oakworm moth

Orange-tipped Oakworm moth

I have to admit I was surprised to find the name of this one. Usually I do a search and can never find anything that looks like what I'm trying to identify. I popped in "red/orange moth with two spots" and didn't expect to find anything. Found it pretty quickly.

Purple Mom/Black Dad cross-pollinated bearded iris

Oops. Totally slipped my mind. I took a picture of the cross-pollinated iris this afternoon and meant to go out to take a better picture when the sun wasn't as harsh. Totally slipped my mind and it's dark outside right now. Ah well...

The first flower of the Purple Mom/Black Dad bearded iris cross. More purple! hehe.

I guess purple is just incredibly dominating as a color so far.

Cherub's Smile not so pink afterall...

Ah, Cherub's Smile (Van Zyverden) has bloomed at last. Do you remember the personal note I left to myself to remember the name of the iris and a quick update when I was excited they were actually still alive?

04/19/13 - One bloom coming up

04/22/13 - Mostly white with a tinge of  very faded purple

04/26/13 - Opens to white flower

04/26/13 - Close-up of faded pattern

I tried to track down the original tag that came with it so that I could contact the company but failed to find it. What I did find was an interesting thread: Irises cubit: General Discussion forum: Bargain irises

It was pretty nifty to find a thread where a handful of other people also shared their experience of purchasing Cherub's Smile but also ended up with these white irises.

First cross-pollinated iris bloom

I wasn't going to originally post any pictures until all had bloomed but, man, it's taking forever. Some of the flowers have been peeking out while waiting for days on end before they want to open. We keep getting cool temperatures. According to the forecasts, we're to expect another period of cool temperatures again at some point. The Black Mom/Purple Dad Iris bed has 3 rhizomes that are blooming. The Purple Mom/Black Dad bed now have 6 rhizomes that are sending out flowers.

The first BM/PD iris has finally opened today and I hobbled together this quick picture of it. So what happened? [Black Mom + Purple Dad = ?] Apparently the father had most/all of a say when it came to the color. The mother, I suppose, made the falls wider. The standards on the child took on a dark purple color while the father's are very light purple.

Can't wait to see the others.

Jade Plants in Gritty Mix

Besides having a ton-bunch of bark mulch and oil-dri sitting around after repotting my adenium obesum, I had some poultry grit left over in the small bag and decided to repot some of my jade plants.

From left to right:
1. Hobbit Jade.
2. What's left of Ms. Jade. I purchased her shortly before Christmas 1996 and she grew very big but has dwindled since then to just that one. Some people identified her as "Crosby's Compact".
3. I bought this from eBay in 2007 because I had never seen anything like it before. I asked about it after I got it and it seems to possibly be some sort of Gollum/Hobbit hybrid since the leaves are varied.
4. Hummel Sunset. The leaves are supposed to turn red at a certain time of the year but usually the leaves get very yellow with red edges.

I had to use a stick to prop up the Hummel Sunset but now that I think about it, I am seriously considering a hard prune since a lot of the branches got wiry. Might relieve some of the weight on it.

I plan to get more poultry grit and repot some more of my jades. I have a Gollum jade that's desperate for a repotting!

It'll be pretty interesting to see how well they respond to the gritty mix, especially when it gets hot. I'll have to keep an eye on it and see if it means frequent watering and get it down to a routine. Last year it rained regularly all throughout summer and it ended our nasty two year drought. So we'll see what happens this year.

Repotting the Desert Rose

I finally got a Desert Rose (Adenium Obesum) from Lowe's.

March 29, 2013 - Desert Rose

After doing lots of research on the gritty mix, I gathered some stuff together and made a batch. I washed off the old dirt.

One side

Other side

 Then I repotted the Desert Rose and lifted the caudex as well.

One side

Other side

So fingers crossed that it responds to the gritty mix. I just hope the plant is patient with me as I figure things out. What I absolutely love about this plant is how the suggestion is to lift the caudex every time you repot, to keep exposing the thicker roots every time until you get this big pile of roots.

Cross-Pollinated Iris Update

I was asked about how well my cross-pollinated Iris were doing. In 2011 I had finally successfully cross-pollinated a purple iris with a black iris, and vice versa. Tons of them germinated in January of 2012 during the mild winter, a lot more than I ever expected because I was told that it's very difficult to get them to germinate.


For a quick refresher on what the parents looked like; Purple on left, Black on right. I know it doesn't look anything black but that's the name that was told to me - probably because when the flowers are emerging, they appear very black before it opens.

The bed above contains "Purple Mom / Black Dad" iris. Very bad angle, I know. I found that the seedlings from this batch of seeds grew very big. A good number of them have started setting off new rhizomes.

This batch above, outlined with black border, is the "Black Mom / Purple Dad" batch. The seedlings from this batch are much smaller and I'm not sure they're being as prolific with rhizomes.

It sort of surprises me on how genetics play a part. The black iris is very quick to grow new rhizomes and bloom a lot. The purple iris seems to be very slow in wanting to grow new rhizomes and don't bloom as often. So it seems the fathers are influencing the seedlings very much...

There's no flowers yet. Last year I reached out to a guy who crossed irises and he warned me that if any pops up this spring, not to get attached to the flower as it meant that it focused on developing a bloom instead of forming new rhizomes. He did warn me that there will be blooms, though.

Anything's possible. Ever since the seedlings popped up last year, they've been growing since. The 2012/2013 winter was not cold enough to kill them down so they're still going ever since they popped up.