I have a spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel. I print out little numbers then tape it to the side of the pot with packaging tape. This was originally done so when the flowers fade, I knew what variety they were. Whenever I polinate one pot with another, I just enter a note into the spreadsheet (ie. 1st bloom polinated with Clown). It also helped with what pots are fertilized with so-so fertlizer and when they were potted and attained, source, and more.

I use Little Tags for mine, they are Small Cardboard pieces with String attached, wish I could describe it in a better way... You can buy them in Office Supply shops

Hi Spiderwoman,
I use what I have at hand,works fine for me :)


{{gwi:390397}}

Just baggie ties with strips of post it notes. I note the date and the pollen donor. As each pod ripens or fails I record it in a spiral bound notebook.
A note of caution if you keep your records on the computer - Back up your info on a disk frequently ! Our house took a lightening strike a few years back and I lost all my data and photos. (Darn near lost the house,too!) Lora

Good Grief Lora I'm Glad that you are OK re Lighting Strike...
The thing I like about the tags I use is that they can be used for single flowers as well as the whole Scape

I Also SO Agree about doing Disk Back ups Frequently... I had to get a Computer Whizz to Completely Wipe the Hard Drive and Start again from Scratch once as something got in and Killed Everything...

I use colored bread ties. I can also put one, two, or three black stripes. Then keep a list.

Ummmmmm...i just had an idea. I have a 4 year old who's crazy about stickers. You can get a whole pack of tiny stickers in the dollar store for a $1. Stick one on the base of the pollinated flower and stick another one of the same design in a notebook and note down the infos u need. It only takes a couple of weeks before u harvest the seeds and these stickers can hold for months. I have a sticker with a smiley face saying "Good Job" stuck in the mirror of my medicine cabinet for months now. It reminds my daughter to brush her teeth well...lol.

I also use the marking tags with the string attached like ninecrow. You should be able to buy them in most office supply aisles. I think a pack of 100 costs about $2/3 or so. It's easy to wrap the string around the fertilized flower. I also have a notebook where I take notes and record all crosses.

CF

What do you do though when you have already like 50 envelops of different crosses? Do you plant them with name tags then try to keep them like that? Or you just plant a few seeds and see what happens. Do you trade the remaining seeds or give away or what happens? I know that I will have tons of seeds myself soon. I have already given away packets, and hopefully they will be germinated.
Hans does it well. He goes for specific crosses, so he does not have 500+ envelops by the end of the flowering season to take care of... Just imagine... If you have 4 bloom per scape and 2 scape per bulb and you have successful pollination with different varieties, then you should have 80 different crosses to envelop and consider from mere 10 bulbs... My bulbs though are giving out 3 scapes a lot of times with 5-6 flowers on each scape...
So this is why I don't really care what kind of crosses I make... I would go crazy trying to keep identity for each of them. I noted a few that I intended for friends, but all the others are simply criss-cross pollinations, and since I collect all the unused pollen in one container, when I have to pollinate a flower and have no other flower blooming, I just dust with the pollen bank... This pollen bank has every kind of pollen mixed: doubles, miniatures, species, cybisters, large flowering ones, South African ones, trumpets, etc... So when I pollinate with this mix, I have seedpods and viable seeds almost 100 percent of a time...
That is the fun part... Then comes the headache to find out what to do with all the seeds. :o) Then the seedlings...

Soultan, what a nead idea, pollen Goulash! lol What do you store the mixed pollen in? I think for this next batch of blooms, I am going to catch all the different pollens the way you have. That sure will make it interesting!

I basically give 90% of my seeds away. I keep just 6-8 seeds for myself.

When I saw how generous Limona was with ripened seeds, I saw how quickly I could be overrun with seeds of many varieties! I've decided to germinate a dozen at a time, keep some for later, and use some for trading and to give to my friends! Problem solved... almost... by next year, I plan to only make the crosses I want, and to simply not pollinate every single flower..

Funny I was just replying to the seed exchange thread saying I thought we should start Hippy dollars.(like a barter system) I thought maybe 10 seeds could = 1 hippydollar. I have a few fun seeds to trade but wish for particular seeds in exchange else I will be overrun with seedlings! Goshdarn it is so much fun to pollinate and imagine results, but I too am only pollinating certain ones. I am trying to try figure out a system to handle this, does anyone have ideas on a good exchange system?

this is my system.
Neuter the flower by using scissors to cut just the open pollen casings(anther -- stamen). I do this by putting an envelope (I re-use the paper ones my bills come in- so I have plenty! :)) just below the pollen, covering the pistil to avoid dropping the pollen onto it. Record the flower name on the outside and place it in the door of the fridge.

I would then select a donor pollen, use tweezers to remove pollen from the envelope and apply it to the pod parent (like all the highly scientific tools and terms?)usually several days in a row.

As far as record keeping I cut plastic blinds (from the thrift store- 50 cents or so) into 2" lengths (easily done with scissors), punch a hole in them with a paper punch and label with a pencil (easily re-used by wetting and erasing with a regular pencil eraser). Pod parent first with pollen parent second (pod- "Novella X Picotee> -pollen). Use a twist tie to tie it just at the base of the flower close to the main stem. Rather unsightly for show but highly effective when pollinating all the flowers with different pollen. I could have 4 crosses on one scape all different donating parents and never lose track.

About 5-6 weeks later when the pod is ripe I then cut the pod off with the label and again store it in a paper envelope. I test germinate 10 by planting in seed starter mix and newspaper tubes under lights. Generally I get 80% germination. (hence all the babies). I trade, and sell the seeds. last year I had about 3000 seeds! A few too many for the spare room.

I have also successfully used the water germination method. Float the seeds in water. It is okay for them to touch but not overlap. I keep an eye on the water and add or change most of the water. You should start seeing results in about 10-14 days. What I don't like about this method is transplanting the seeds with such a fragile root into soil. I find it more finiky (that a word?) than just straight into soil.

When I plant them in the soil I stick the fat end of the seed, papery covering and all, into the soil standing it upright (vertically). Really good results and very strong seedling. The soil method takes much longer to see results. I believe up to 6 weeks for some, even in the same batch.
All depends on your patience level.

I found unsuccessful pollination occured when I applied pollen only once and then there is that diploid issue which I have not figured out yet. One of these days I will do research on it. I remember quite some time ago it was mentioned in some news group but I didn't know enough then to understand let alone ask an intelligent question. I do know it would explain why Papillo butterfly did not cross with anything that I tried.

Having mentioned Papillo butterfly. I bought two from RC last year and gave the one with the scape to my mother for Christmas. The second one came with some rot, I notified them (and was told on my next order they would fix the problem- and they did on the next order!) I did not get flowers of course on that one. This year I only got leaves again! I thought I read somewhere here that they can be difficult to get to rebloom. Any suggestions of how to get it to perform?

WOW Mermaid, Excellent explanation on your methods. I hope a lot of newbies are printing this out or taking notes! The only thing I do differently is I use blank mailing lables cut lengthwise in 3. I write the names and then wrap the center of the label around the neck of the bloom I pollinated and stick the 2 ends together. I write in pencil and the label strips hold up even in the rain.

Cindee, I just use an old plastic medicine cap with the safety cover... When I open it up to put more unused pollen in it, I always have to smell it. It smells sweet. I love it... Even if I didn't pollinate anything with the excess pollen, it is worth just to sniff into the bottle sometimes.

Great idea, Soultan...er um, the storing, not the sniffing...LOL! At the end of my blooming season, we should exchange some of our Pollen Goulash to make it even MORE interesting!

Soultan, when you save the pollen do you save the whole anther or just dust as much pollen into the container as you can? I would think saving the anther end would be moist and perhaps cause too much humidity in your vials. Just thinking out loud, my friend. How's TOTO????? Did he figure it lil chew toys were edible??

I just snip off the pollen pod itself without the stem. I only snip off the pod itself when the stem of the anther is drying up already. The pod at that times almost just falls into the container, I don't even need to snip.
Toto has figured out the rawhide... He is slow eating it though. He likes them better as toys.

LOL about Toto! Thanks again for giving me this idea of collecting a pollen coctail from now on! Other than selfing a few from here on out, I really don't care what I create anymore. Think of all the tags and time I will save!!!