Hot! More Hippeastrums, of course...

It's hot out there!

12/06/13 - Record high temperature!?

But as long as the wind blows, it's not so bad out there. Just wish it wasn't so muggy! So what have I been up to, garden-wise? Can't think of anything...

I am up to my old amaryllis/hippeastrum tricks again. Back on the 31st of October, someone shared this picture of H. Pixie from 'Living Gardens' on the amaryllis forum and I thought it was pretty cool. Of course the hybridizer in me wanted to buy one and see if I could cross it and try for unique flowers.

I placed an order for one Pixie and one Intokazi.

11/06/13 - Received the bulbs - Hippeastrum Intokazi and Hippeastrum Pixie

Unfortunately, shortly after receiving the bulbs, someone from Living Gardens contacted me to let me know that the supplier mislabeled the bulbs and that Pixie wouldn't be available until next year. They gave me a couple choices on what I wanted to do, and I decided to get a refund on the bulb and try for Pixie again when it becomes available. I thought it was pretty cool that they were honest about it and made sure I was satisfied. I'd certainly buy from them again.

12/06/13 - Amaryllis Intokazi

12/06/13 - Amaryllis "Pixie Bust"

Unfortunately my "Pixie Bust", which I've nicknamed it as a combo of 'pixie dust' and BUST, did not come with a flower scape ready to go. From what I can see on the amaryllis forum, it appears this bulb blooms white flowers. I'm waiting to see what everyone else's are like and hopefully they'll share their results. I won't know myself if it blooms next year or whatnot. I don't really have good luck with miniature amaryllis because my Green Dragon never bloomed again.

Intokazi is doing excellent so far. Can't wait to see the blooms open.

Canna Lily from Seed

I never really have any luck with canna lilies. Japanese beetles usually devour the plants to mere stalks and they continue to be a growing problem every year that there's just so many of them. I've tried to dig up rhizomes to get rid of this plant but it never works.

This year seems to be a different story. There were just a handful of Japanese beetles that came around.

August 14, 2013 - Canna Lilies

 They grew big and took over the entire bed, quickly crowding out the other plants growing in there.

August 14, 2013 - Canna Lily seed pods

 It was pretty weird seeing the spiky seed pods on top of the plants. It turns out that each part of the pod has one large black seed that can be harvested from it.

August 14, 2013 - Canna Lily seeds

 I did a search online to see how the seeds are usually handled. The most overwhelming response is to resort to 'scarification' in order to activate the seeds into germinating. I couldn't find anything on winter sowing them. I decided that since scarification is usually the method, I went and scratched the seeds on sandpaper until I saw the white tissue and I popped two seeds into a plastic cup of water for several days.

They say that taproots are supposed to start peeking out after a couple days but I didn't have that luck. I left the seeds in the water for about a week before I decided that it must've been too cold in the house for them. I got a small container and put the seeds in there, and set them outside in full sun.

August 30, 2013 - Canna Lily seedling

 Finally, on August 30th, the first seedling pops out.

September 2, 2013

 I was also quite amazed at how fast this seedling was taking off.

September 10, 2013 - Canna Lily seedlings

 Eventually the second seed surfaced and the leaves were full on red, which I thought was pretty cool.

September 27, 2013 - Canna Lily seedlings getting bigger

 Without disturbing the soil they were in, I decided to repot it in a bigger pot since the green canna lily was getting quite big. The red continued to stay rather small.

October 20, 2013 - Canna Lily seedlings

This is what it looks like today, with the green canna lily being quite happy. I might have to re-pot this into a bigger pot at some point. The red is still pretty small and it seems to be struggling.

This was a pretty interesting experiment. While I did collect a lot of seeds, I ultimately decided that I was just going to stick to these two because of the bad luck I usually have with the canna lilies.We must've had a freak year with the lack of japanese beetles or something but it'll be a lot easier to defend two seedlings to see what their flowers are like, instead of germinating a huge batch and doing a lot of fighting if/when they come back next year.

More Iris Seeds!

Like I needed more... Ha! ;)

Mother: Immortality Iris
Father: Purple Mom/Black Dad #1
Result: 39 seeds!

I'm really excited about this. I have to admit, I was nervous. I kept feeling the pod and it was giving so much that I thought I was experiencing an 'air pod', no seeds inside. Then heading out today, I saw that the top of the pod was peeling open - but there was a big ol' bug-chewed hole.

I was very relieved to see that there was no damage inside. There were 39 seeds inside. I can't wait to winter-sow them. Very excited. ;)

Pink/White Pods

This has been a strange year when it comes to the amaryllis.

May 10, 2013 - Pink/White Amaryllis

May 17, 2013 - Pink/White Amaryllis

June 11, 2013 - Pink/White Seed Pod

What stunned me this year is that there were a handful of seed pods swelling on the Pink/White. I have only ever been successful once in getting a seed pod to set and give me viable seeds. Every year, it's just failure after failure. It hates its own pollen and the pollen of others.

June 12, 2013 Pink/White Mother & Red Father Amaryllis

And in fact - This flower here was from the only seed pod I could get from the Pink/White years back. I labeled it as "PinkWhite Mom/Unknown Father". For some strange reason it decided to bloom this year, way after spring. When the flower opened, it revealed that the father was Red. It doesn't show anything exciting or new - which means that Red is an incredibly dominant color. I selfed the flowers because there were no other amaryllis flowers at this time of year - all three flowers died out with no seed pods. Does this mean it inherited its mother's dislike for pollen? Who knows.

June 25, 2013 - Amaryllis Seeds

All said and done, The Pink/White Amaryllis set not one.. not two.. but three seed pods with viable seeds. The insides were a mixture of black seeds and a bunch of chaff. I don't know *what* it was this year that got the Pink/White excited enough to set three seed pods but I gotta get these seeds in some dirt...

What an odd year!

Cross-Pollinated Asiatic Lily - Part 2

the second cross-pollinated lily opened today.

The petals are narrower and a bit longer. What is also interesting is that this has dark red in the throat as well as faint veins of the same color.

Cross-Pollinated Asiatic Lily

Do you remember when I was surprised that a couple pods took back in 2011 and how surprised I was when seedlings were growing in 2012? Only two of them returned this year.

So what does a white asiatic lily mother and an unknown father create?

I couldn't believe it. It is so different! I love how the yellow is displayed. It's so cool.

The second plant's flower bud indicates that it probably will look just like its sibling.

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.