I hate to be the first one to answer these kind of posts since I've probably made every mistake one can make when it comes to novice hybridizing. If I could do one thing over again it would be to have given a lot more thought to my specific goals regarding what I'm trying to work toward. Random pollen dabbing can be lots of fun, but the results can be very hit and miss too. Also if you have a plan in mind you can avoid collecting lots of daylilies that you will never use once you do decide what your objectives are. So if you can define what it is you'd like to accomplish, picking and choosing your breeding stock will become less intimidating.

when I first fell head over heels for daylilies, I went and bought just about every daylily that I felt I just had to have. After some years elapsed I began to realize that I was mostly fixated with very large flowers, blue eyed cultivars, tall, strong, well branched scapes. I like to see ruffles and triple edges, but they need to open well when the mornings are cool. So I've eliminated a very large number of the lilies I originally purchased from my hybridizing efforts. I look at new intros coming out and ask myself whether or not they fit in with my objectives. I'm spending a lot less money these days than I once used to. Good luck in your new adventure....enjoy the journey.

Linda

Oh, boy, This would be so hard to answer. You need to develop your own taste in daylilies as to what you prefer and really, really like before you can decide on which plants to better work with. Plus your north in a zone 5 so that does matter. Do you want to work with the southern flowers or do you want to go more hardy northern stock for your zone? Does rebloom matter to you? Are you interested in spiders? UFOs? Or just bagels? Do they have to have frilly edges in order for you to think they are pretty? Things to think about before you start buying.

I suggest you find a mentor first. You are located in an area where there are lots of great daylily hybridizers. Look in the AHS Region info. for your area, and their source list to see who is close to you. I would visit display gardens and hybridizers to get an idea of what you need to do. Then ask the hybridizer for a few plants they would recommend you start with.
Start small and make sure you understand the complete process before you commit too much. It's not easy to get a crop of seedlings in the ground every year, but that's what it takes to create your own flowers.
Ed

Here is a link that might be useful: AHS Website

What are your hybridizing goals? As others have already stated, you need to figure out what you like first, and what your goal is. Why do you want to hybridize?

I have a small UF/spider hybridizing program because I love UF's. What do you love about daylilies?

If you have 3 daylilies, my guess is you don't know yet. When you figure it out, you should spend as much money as you can afford for the best plants you can buy. If you don't know what you like, that could get expensive fast ...

Try this site, I found it to be loaded with information. Go down the left side and click on Hybridizing basics.

http://www.ofts.com/bill/daylily.html

Hope this helps.

Nancy VB

Thank you for the good advice. It has given me some new things to consider before I continue. As far as hybridizing goals, my initial goal is fairly simple - I just want to see if I can do it. My ultimate goal? Once I was sitting at a conference where every desk had an open laptop on it. I was getting bored, so I went over to ebay and typed in "Daylilies - completed auctions - highest priced first.:" WOW! I saw dayliles that made my jaw drop. One was large, frilly, shades of purple/magenta with a chartreuse center and may have had the word "Leprechaun" in the cultivar name. A few farther down, I saw a bright red one, with a yellow/cream center and it may have had the name "China" or "Chinese" in the cultivar name. That was a few years ago, so I may never run across those particular culitvars again, but it certainly made me want to learn more about them.

Years ago, I bought a purple/lavendar (I don't know the proper color terms) daylily called "Chicago Queen," and since then, I've favored the red/pink/purples. This is strange, because what I am growing now are pastel yellows, darker yellows and apricots (not on same property as my new flower beds. I like the frilly stuff, the thick petals, the ruffled edges, the doubles, the bicolors, etc, and at this point in time are not interested in UFO, spider, pastels, small blooms - maybe later.

I will be looking at the sites you suggested and doing some more reading.

A few quick, and I hope not dumb, questions:

1. As a beginner can I jump right into buying tetraploid lilies, or should I buy diploid first, or should I learn by working with both? (no money I spend on plants is wasted, since can I buy/grow what I want, and then later, if I tire of it, I can move it to a commercial property where they are enjoyed by the public.)

2. Is there a reason I should be looking at award winners to start out with?

3. Being a zone 5, should I buy now and in autumn, or should I wait till spring? The new flower beds are protected by buidlings or the woods, so extreme temps shouldn't be a problem.

Thanks again for your thoughtful advice.
Off topic, but you want to see my big pumpkin?

Here is a link that might be useful:

Wow.....great job with the pumpkin!!
If I were you I would initially make a choice between Dips and Tets. Then I would go to the link below, register, and check out the listings and select 6 to 10 plants (if that's humanly possible) to cross with each other. I'd make sure that they were all blooming at the same time too ie early/mid or mid. I prefer to plant in the spring, but if you can get them in the ground 6 weeks before you start getting frost they should be fine. If you decide to plant in the fall I would mulch with a few inches of good shredded bark after you get a couple hard frosts. You will want to pull the mulch back a few inches from the crown in the spring to avoid crown rot.

Make sure whatever you buy is listed as being fertile both ways. That will make life simpler for you. I would also try to get plants that are listed as at least a double fan (3 or more would be even better) if you are going to try to set pods on new plants. There are sellers on the LA that sell pollen during the bloom season so you can buy and store pollen in your freezer to use on your daylilies if you want to use pollen from some of the more recent and more expensive CV's. Pollen is a lot cheaper to buy than a hybridizers latest intro.

I really do agree with Ed about contacting a professional hybridizer or two. If you live close enough to John Benz, Jamie Gossard, or a number of other very good hybridizers in the Ohio area, I'd sure make some phone calls and go and ask some questions. The advice you get can make the decisions a lot easier. JMO

Linda

Here is a link that might be useful: The Lily Auction

1. I would suggest both dips and tets. Use the diploids to establish procedures. Tetraploids are fussier about most things, so the diploids will keep you from getting frustrated.

2. Award winners are nice, but pick those that have foliage habit suited for your area. Choosing plants grown or hybridized in your area is probably the best.

3. Since I don't garden in your zone, I'm no expert, but I've heard that up north planting in the spring allows the plant to get well established before having to deal with winter.

That is an especially nice pumpkin! And a very cute belly button! ;0)
Ed

I first just bought plants I found at garden centers, then spread to the internet for shopping for some of the 'pretties' you just don't find at Home Depot or Walmart! My Dad and Aunt have larger gardens than I do and they have done some hybridizing-but both of them lean towards spiders. Therefore, I've spent the last couple years thinning out the 'grab anything differents' like Linda, and slowly replacing them with nicer plants within my budget. I have the paranoid belief that if I buy a plant over $30.00, it will just roll over dead!

Being in NW Ohio, I have found that I do need to be careful when purchasing southern plants. Some do ok, some die a quick icy death, and some struggle-I've had one for 3 or 4 years now with no bloom. I keep saying last year-but I really want this flower! (Hillbilly Heart) This is true for those both near the house and those not so near, but more so away from the house. While I do plant some in August, they don't always bloom the next year, but wait one extra year if they are somewhat touchy about the cold.

Northern hybridizing also adds it's own complications. Will you have a greenhouse to start the seeds? Or plan on early spring sowing? Since I just do it for fun, I have been known to start them in a fish tank in late Feb./early March. It will then take another year to two years to see a bloom. There are plenty of wonderful flowers out there under $30.00. I have had good luck with Maryott flowers (I've only had one that he sent as a bonus decide it didn't like it's first winter here -but it is starting to recover.)-and they have a sale running this time of year.

I am most assuredly no expert at breeding daylilies, but I have bred horses most of my life. I love to hybridize for fun, and utilize Tinker's Garden Daylily Data. If I see some seeds offered that I like....I look the plant up on Tinkers and see what is is, how its bred and what it produces. I have several favorites that I depend on to produce pretty babies that I like. The more you study the bloodlines, the more you will understand that breeding is not random. So, follow the advice above [which is what I tell new people coming into the horse business] - set your goals, decide what YOU like, what YOU want to breed for...then look at photos....lots to see on the Lily Auction and hybridizers' websites. I spend quite a bit of time on the internet looking. Learn how to grow the seeds, figure out where you are going to put them when they grow. I just had 3 long raised seedling beds built in anticipation of my seedlings yet to be. I will fill the beds with composted horse manure, chopped leaves from last fall and a compost mix of sand, bark and mushroom compost. The beds will sit all winter and be ready to plant in spring. Before, I have had to put the seedlings wherever I could. Now....I am getting organized and it is going to be more fun! Enjoy!

While you are waiting for your daylilies to grow and bloom, purchase some seeds from Lily Auction and play around with them. Decide how you want to germinate them and see how that works. Also you can purchase some great crosses for a fraction of the cost of buying the parent plants.
Be cautious with buying from ebay...I have been burned with plants and seeds. I stay with LA and have never had a problem.
Have fun.

Nancy VB

Welcome to addiction!

All great advice so far, but if I could add my vote to the suggestion to contact a breeder and/or to mentor under someone: for my own efforts, nothing really helped as much as personal guidance. My own inclination was to pretty much cross what I thought was pretty with other pretty faces. But a friendly hybridizer walked me through some other important aspects--such as evaluating the qualities (height, vigor, rate of increase,balance of foliage to scape height,floriferousness etc) of the plant itself all-the-while keeping the flower in mind. I might have wasted a lot (read: a lot more) of time, effort and materials on poor breeding selections.

Learn to be absolutely ruthless in your selection process--it can be hard (emotionally, sentimentally) to ditch a seedling you've been watching for 2-3 or more years. My mentor gave me the spine to yank out plants that just weren't up to snuff--important since I have limited room.

A great reference source is Tinkers, and an aspect I find helpful is the fertility data. I recall Curt Hanson mentioning in an interview something about not bothering with varieties that suffer from fertility issues--afterall, why would you want your own hybrids to be of dubious fertility? Before (most) of my purchases, since I purchase with a mind to breeding, I check to see if the plant has good fertility and whether any notable offspring from it have been registered. Of course, those are just my own ground rules--I'm prone to breaking them, lol.

-eric

Here is a link that might be useful: Tinkers

Just as everyone else has suggested, develop a goal as to what what you would like to achieve with your breeding program.

Once you have a goal in mind, then start looking for prospective parents that have characteristics you would like to see combined(scape height/color combinations or patterns/fragrance/rebloom/ bloom time)in the resultant offspring of such a cross.

Then research the ancestry of those potential parents. I've even gone so far as to set up spread sheets to record all the info I can get on a particular cultivar in regards to its ancestry.

An example of my OCD when it comes daylily ancestry... :o)

{{gwi:948390}}

*Note: I use the medium green to indicate pod parent and the dark blue to indicate pollen parent. The lime green indicates a tetraploid conversion of a registered diploid parent. Blank boxes indicate either I couldnt find a photo of a parent or the parent was listed as a "seedling"

The AHS database is great for getting information on registered cultivars and most contemporary hybridizers provide just as much if not more info on their newest intros.

Let the adventure begin!

Donald