What is a Bridge Plant?

My wife said i should not post each day but wait 2 days, so here i am. I am getting itchy fingers so hang in there if you can. Today is Sunday and the first day of the week and this morning i went out before i studied my Sunday School Lesson and saw this beautiful seedling. it is a 6 inch flower and scape is about 32 inches with about 14 buds. This is a Bridge Plant. It is burgandy and a big black eye with a black edge around the petals and 2 owls ears. I am in love. For me this flower made my bloom season and we havent hardly started. This is line bred from Lavender Blue Baby. Pod parent is LBB and pollen parent is 2 kids (F-1s) bred together and the (F-2) kid bred back to granma so to speak. I have been trying to get better blue eyes with great branching and here comes this black eyed beauty and messes up all my plans.

This will be my Bridge Plant. I love the flower and love the height of the scape but i need better bud count and branching. So am i going to do. I have lots of burgandy flowers with great branching and buds. Here is my plan. I have limited polled from the bridge plant that now has a number. D1210. I will pick out about 4 of my best branched burgandy colored plants along the same lines but with the genetics of LBB in them. As the flowers open on my 4 pod parents they will get pollen from D1210. If i am lucky enough to have a pod parent with a recessive gene for black eyes then i am in business and should have lots of seedlings to pick from. Now if this first generation(F-1) of seedlings dont have the black eye i am trying to get i will take the best seedlings that are tall and branching and breed them back to D1210 and most of the (F-2) generation should be showing the black eyes with great scapes. Also along the way there will be other seedlings of different base colors with black eyes and the edges should get bigger with each generation.

See there is nothing to it but time and a plan. When this happens i will have 4 years of breeding in this one flower. If God permits me to live this long i hope God will keep blessing our garden with all these beautiful flowers. We may never sell anything but we will always have a pretty yard. Thanks for listening. Jim Elliott

Cosmic Kaleidoscope Kids

Cosmic Kal. and Super Fancy Face introed by Jack Carpenter are changing the look in my seedlings. I love the patterned eyed seedlings i am seeing. When we moved to our present address i didnt have hardly any eyes, they were all selfs(solid colors). Then I got Jacks Cosmic Kal. and fell in love. Now i am trying to put eyes on everything in the garden but there will always be some selfs around here. The 2 pictures here are Cosmic Kal pollen used on 2 different Lavender Blue Baby seedlings as pod parents. The red eyed pink has 20 buds and is nicely branched. The dark eyed one needs some plant habit. These are dip seedlings.

I had 2 ladies in the garden this morning buying some seedlings for their yard and they loved the cantelope colored selfs and didnt care for the eyed seedlings much. I really intended to take their pictures for the blog but somehow forgot to. Each day more seedlings are opening and more pollen is spread. Lee P. is so right. Life is good. Jim Elliott

The Last Blue

This is the seedling from Jack Carpenters that my good friend Pat Larsen shared with me.

Goodnite. Jim Elliott

Something New , Something Blue

I did it but dont know how. The text is below this one so i hope to put on pictures now. Jim Elliott

Something New, Something Blue

The internet server has been down for a couple days so i have some catching up to do. But it is too late to get long winded. Today i used about 150 blooms to put pollen on today. I had a couple nice surprises in the seedling patch with some blue eyed things. The flower with the color on the sepals with the dark blue eye is a Jack Carpender seedling that i plan on using quite a lot. The other 2 seedlings are line bred down from Lavender Blue Baby. I also had a blue eyed seedling bloom today out of D02-08 X Cosmic Kalidescope that had a patterned blue eye but i didnt take a picture because it was having issuses opening the first time. I hope you like these and maybe something better will bloom in the morning. Enjoy and Thanks for looking. Jim Elliott

Richer In Red

All three of these red diploid seedlings bloomed this morning. Hooray, i have been looking for a good red dip to breed with for a while and little did i know that it just hadnt bloomed yet. I traded for one named David and Alan by Michael Bouman that will not bloom till next season most likely but now i have 4 new reds that bloomed this morning. Thank You Lord! The seedling on this mornings post was out of Lavender Blue Baby breeding. These three on tonights post are all out of Dr. Elliotts Russell Southall. It is dormant, tall, about 6 inches, red and reblooms here. Folks on the Robin last year wanted to know where a good red dip was at and i told them then that Russell S. was a good one so here is all the proof you need if you like red dips. All 3 are 6 inches plus but only one has the branching i like but when i get through with my reds they will have lots of branching and buds. Big Bright Red.

Come on you cant tell me you dont like these seedlings. I know there are some hard core tet folks out there but could you tell either way if i didnt tell you these are dips? Maybe i can sway you over a little before our bloom season is over. As of yet i dont have a greenhouse up and running and all our hybridizing is done outside in the field, that means no shade. But we still set lots of seed pods. I used Carpenters Home Run King pollen on eyed seedlings this morning. I probably put pollen on 30 or so flowers.

We cant wait till morning to see what is waiting for us in the seedling patch. After all these years the drive is still there and this time of year is better than ice cream to hybridizers. I had 2 visiters this afternoon and they never saw a bloom they didnt like, my kinda folks. Isnt this a great way to pass time. Thanks for listening and see ya in the morning. Jim Elliott

www.woostergarden.com

In The Morning Light

Good Morning, we are getting some really pretty seedlings of different colors beginning to open for us. I am self employed and days like today it is hard to leave the house. In 2 weeks the Northeast Arkansas Daylily Club will be here for a visit and to buy some seedlings to put in their yards. We have clubs come each year but this is a brand new club so there will some teaching and lots of questions asked. My wife and i went to their meeting last fall and did a slide show and cut a handful of scapes that were blooming. They were amazed that the scapes were still blooming that time of year.

My good friend Pat Larsen and his wife Patricia, Patman and Patwoman, just came back from south Texas this Sunday and had some nice plants they had bought at Paynes garden and Mark Carpenters( The Lily Farm). Pat shared some seedlings and intro Home Run King with me. Thanks Patman. I did use the Home Run King pollen this morning on about 30 plants.

Here is a red seedling as a single bloom and a clump shot. 5 inch flower and lots of buds and branching. With proper branching you can see the flowers are able to open flat without buds crowding them. I think there is 5 blooms open and no crowding. It is kinda hot red not a clear color but we like it. The seedling bloom was shot in the morning light this morning. The anthers are still closed, now you can see one example of why i use frozen pollen. Gotta run and will show more seedlings tonight. Be Patient. Thanks for looking. Jim Elliott