congrats! I started with quite a few eggs this year (about 12. 9 cats survived, but only 7 have successfully pupated. They burrowed down a couple of weeks ago, I dug out the pupas from the shredded paper I had them in and am anxiously waiting! This is my first time with them. (first year butterfly gardener) I placed them in a springy netted laundry basket with a little shredded paper on top and some limbs to climb up on. I then threw a light weight towel on the top. Will this be ok for them to emerge in?

Thanks everybody! I was so excited when I found it last night that I forgot to look at the tag. It is Ludgers Windsong x Mountain Magic. I didn't think it was opening for another day & just happened to look over & there it was. If the neighbors heard me, they probably thought I was crazy. It was dark by the time I got the pictures so that's all I got & a good thing because when I checked this am, it was chewed up (grrrr). The color is the same as it was last night except for the pink creeping up the bloom. The two tone look has stayed. It is 11 inces from top to bottom & almost 11 inches wide from twanger to twanger. I'll see how what's left of the flower does the next couple days. I have Ys on about 10% of my seedlings but I'm running out of time here. Only about 22 days till the frost date. I have a dream of naming special brugs after my children (big dream since there are 8 of them & 7 grandkids & two of my best friends). Most everyone I know just laughs & says I'll be lucky to get one. Well I have high hopes anyway. Linda

Hi Nancy, I've posted about using Strep. 'Mighty Mouse' in crosses many times, so one more time won't hurt. It is often thought of as being sterile because the pods, when they mature look to be empty. But, there are often a few fertile seeds in the pod, and it only takes one to germinate and grow on to get something special. When a strep pod matures we expect to see lots of dust like seeds. So, when this one matures, the few seeds are barely noticable. I have only used 'Mighty Mouse' one time and that was over 20 years ago, but I got two plants from that one cross. The pollen parent was a species, gardenii. Anyway, your pod looks good. Grow it to term and when it starts to crack, carefully open it over some white paper to catch the tiny seeds. Hopefully you have good eyesight or a good magnifying glass to see the seeds. Plant them right away in a sterile mix and hopefully your first attempt will be successful. If not, don't dispair and keep trying. It is not difficult to make strep crosses and there is a lot of value in making mini crosses--most of potential here hasn't yet been seen. I learned about this plant as a hybrid parent from the creator of the cross who also was the first to make crosses with it. He said it would make 7 seeds, on average. His first seedlings from crosses with MM proved to be much more fertile, and subsequent generations led to the first mini streps, which really were more like compact streps as they could still get fairly large. He didn't name any of his crosses as he felt that each new generation made better hybrids than the previous. This was too bad as there are none of these early crosses still being grown. But, they were used by others to make the compact types that we see today. Of the hybrids that came from MM, but from a number of generations later, the best known is Jonathan Ford's 'Joker', a red hybrid. Dale Marten's 'Texas Hot Chili, a cross with kentaniensis, has MM in its background. The hybridizer of MM gave up on gesneriad hybridizing within a few years of making this cross, so much of the potential was never realized. Since it was made, dozens of heretofore never cultivated species were brought into cultivation, some of which grow fairly small. We have a much more diverse gene pool to work with today, so there is lots of potential. MM is a cross of a seedling of the 'Cape Beauties' strain x johannis (white flower form). Jon

Ok, time for updates! I'm not having too great of luck with this! I was amazed and excited when the above batch calloused so easily on the first try. I potted them up in clear cups with regular potting soil and put them in a greenhouse tray with a tall clear dome over it. Left the tray on my back porch. One by one they turned black and died. I'm pretty sure I know why tho. They were fairly long cuttings and I didn't stick them down all the way in the cups, and a couple of them were too tall for even the taller dome I used. So, the dome was not sitting flush over the tray. There was about 2" of air space, so I think the cold air got in and dried the stems out. I didn't mist them either. I did the second batch of florist rose cuttings and after the 2 week wait, they had not calloused, but were mostly still green. I cut off the black ends and potted these up into a special indoor potting medium we sell at Ace that's used by pot growers. Mostly peat moss, perlite and lime I believe, with the mycorhizzae also. I only kept the cuttings that had swollen budeyes. I put them in the greenhouse tray and added a layer of clay pebbles soaked in water. Made sure the clear dome was flush over the tray. I got a 2-light fluorescent light fixture and put 40w full spectrum lights in, and put a heating pad under the tray. I set the light timer to come on around 4:00pm and go off about 1:00am. Then I put a chunk of my shade cloth over the whole table and light set-up to cut down on the brightness of the light at night (it lights up most of my backyard) and to also maybe add a little warmth. So far, after a week or more, the cuttings are staying green and budeyes are still swollen. No need to mist, as the wet clay pebbles and the heating pad create a nice moist atmosphere under the dome. I also buried the stems all the way into the cups. I did have one stem last week that got a bit of mold on the tip above the top budeye, and I snipped it off. So far, so good. Now today I upwrapped another batch a day early, and was very disappointed. There were several stems that turned black, and almost every one had turned black at the base. The rest of the stems were green with swollen budeyes, so I decided to go ahead and pot them up like I did the previous batch. Now with this batch, I'm kinda thinkin' I might not've gotten all the excess water out of the newpaper, and it was a bit lesser quality newspaper also. Not that that might make a difference, but who knows? I'm also thinking maybe when I diluted the Dip'n'grow, I might not've dilute it as much as I should have. I mean there's just so many different factors and variables to consider. I'm just hoping that these cuttings will root anyway in the potting medium and the greenhouse trays. I still have about 4 more batches of florist roses all rolled up, waiting for the 2 week period. We'll see what happens with those. I'm gonna keep trying, that's for sure. Eventually something will work!