Sooo true Berrytea4me - I'm so hoping I get some fab crosses out of the 50 or so seed crosses I purchased all season! I'm dying to share them with you all this season. I actually still have DL's putting out scapes right now-can you believe it? They are a little chilled though........but what heart!

Did you buy any dark eyes/edged or blue/purple crosses??

Chris in CA

Oh, I'm sooo envious that you have anything in the garden to look at and DL at that!

I've had snow on the ground w/o a break since Thanksgiving and tonight it's down below 0. This is unusual to stay frozen so long but follows an unusual Indian Summer that left my petunias in tact until 2-days before Thanksgiving so I guess you have to give a little to get a little. I was still in the middle of planting spring bulbs when this hit so now I'm going to have to pot the rest up and store in the garage.

I tried hard for a few dark eye/edges and blue/purples but lost out- they go high. Did get a couple lavender/blues. Have some more bids in now for blues & dark eye/edges so we'll see what I have after auctions close. Maybe I'm learning a little about how to bid there.

I was also trying for some near whites for potential color clarification/substance in later crosses but lost there too.

Here are my wins so far
WREN SONG x PARISIAN ROMANCE
AVA GARDNER x ALWAYS AFTERNOON
PRINCESS DIANA x SPACECOAST SWEETNESS
SOME SWEET DAY x BOLD TIGER
LAVENDER TOMORROW X CLARIFICATION
SCOTTISH FANTASY X APRIL LA QUINTA

I bought way too many seeds as always - that coupled with my own crop will be tons to start this year. I went for mainly blueish crosses and also wanted Lambertson genes. I don't have any from the past two years in my garden so I wanted to see what might evolve from crosses including BLUE HIPPO or ASIAN FAIRY BLUEBIRD. The other drawing card was any PRECIOUS CANDY crosses. I wasn't able to buy that plant until the fall and have seen some of the offspring at Mecca last year. Very impressive - so I tended to buy interesting crosses with PRECIOUS CANDY as one of the parents. Last but not least were crosses made with CHINA CLIPPER, FANTASTIC FRINGE and CAROL TODD- I have seen these plants in person and love them - one interesting cross I bought was CHINA CLIPPER X BLOODFIRE. Will be intersting to see which dramatic color wins out -- now if I get YELLOW from those twoo -- I am going to be mad..lol
Other crosses I bought with high hopes:

ART GALLERY MIST X PURPLE UMBRELLA - a 5 for 5 germination!
BLUE THROAT X SP GONE BULLDOGIN
SAILING AT DAWN X JENNIFER TRIMMER
PRECIOUS CANDY X HEAVENLY PINK FANG
DREAMS OF HEROS X BLUE EYES GLANCE
YOU AND EYE X CAROL TODD
SPACECOAST SEAS SHELLS X PRECIOUS CANDY

Berrytea4me - I like APRIL LA QUINTA so will be interested to see what that one does for you
In two years maybe I will have some very special seedlings to share - would love to rush bloom for this season but not getting my hopes up.
Shelly

Shelly,
I like BLUE HIPPO and ASIAN FAIRY BLUEBIRD too. They are gorgeous though it would be nice to know their lineage better (sdlg x sdlg or sdlg x doesn't tell us much). Lambertson seems to do that a lot. AFB is reminiscent of Trahlyta to me but that look must come down through Alice Lambertson's lineage somewhere.

I think Mike must be having some year end issues with the LA today. My login would not stick for the longest time this morning and now I notice all the auctions due to close in a couple days say time left 367 days. I also had issues with all my "auction won" e:mails yesterday- can't read any of them so no contact info for the sellers.

I'm a little worried I'll end up with too many seeds for the space I have too, especially since I'm one of those who can never put a living plant into the compost...I know people say they have to "cull" the seedlings that they don't like but that will be tough. I'll have to look for homes for them with people who are not as picky as myself 'cause I for sure won't be able to kill them on purpose.

Berrytea,
Since Lambertson is doing line breeding now, you're going to see seedling x seedling on most of his new and future intros. Both ASIAN FAIRY BLUEBIRD and BLUE HIPPO came from SUDDENLY BLUE seedlings, so you've got blue eyes going back four generations that started with DUST BE DIAMONDS. ASIAN FAIRY BLUEBIRD's other parent is AWESOME ARTIST, which is a rock solid parent for Luddy. I have ASIAN FAIRY BLUEBIRD, and just love it. Unfortunately I only got two seed pods from its pollen because it bloomed in such scorching temps last summer. Even though I have it, I've been tempted to bid on LA seed crosses with ASIAN FAIRY BLUEBIRD as a parent. So far, I haven't been too impresed with real-life garden picks of BLUE HIPPO. The petal color looks beige or tan, and the eye looks more purple than blue. Of course those are first year blooms. It probably gets better as it settles in.

Debra

Berrytea4me
I work with school children and daylilies too.. we buy alot of the mixed lots offered on the lily auction for the kids to work with - but I NEVER have a problem finding a home for a plant that doesn't match what I want. I can't put it in the compost heap - even the "dogs" as they say can be loved by someone. Schools, retirement communities, my mothers quilting friends -- all standing in line. I almost had a riot between two senior citizens about where to put a nameless yellow clump until I divided it - putting a mini clump outside each patients patio - of course I think they were still arguing about which clump was going to do the best..lol
Shelly
as for the auction thing - happens each year I think but Mike gets it cleared up quickly --

Hi Debra,
Thanks for all the great info on Lambertson's blues. I'm not very familiar w/his work yet.

Newbie question- what is line breeding and why does that lead to sdlg x sdlg parentage labels?

BTW, I'm a Debra too so every time I read a post to/from you I have a double take to remember its not for me .... keeps me on my toes. I think I'll stick to Berrytea here to keep my OWN confusion down..lol

Shelly, Great idea to share with school children & sr's. I have a couple lily fans in my family who have not yet discovered DL so I'm sure I'll be sharing there first, then maybe at church. My kids pre-school classmates are a little too young to appreciate DL but maybe in a few years :)

Sorry for such a silly question, but...where do you go to buy your DL seeds? I'd like to start some seedlings myself either in February or next winter.

Mark-

I've bought a few crosses from LA this year for the first time--a real mix, I just bought ones I liked the look of!

This is my list;

Tuscawilla Snowdrift X Blue Oasis
Stargate Portal X Luna
Emperor's dragon X Aerial Applique
Age of Aquarius X Asian Fairy Bluebird
Siloam Tiny Tim X Christine Reilly
Unique Purple X Satin Bird
Siloam Tiny Tim X (I've forgotten what, they are still in transit!)

And my favourite bonus;

Yazoo Wild Violets X Starchild.

I had another nice bonus, Joan Senior X Starchild, but unfortunately one of my cats, a young Ocicat boy, managed to get into the room with those seedlings yesterday and pulled them all out!! I've tried replanting them but I don't know if they will survive.

I couldn't be too angry though as the cat in question has been very ill and is in the middle of a series of major operations so I was actually quite happy that he had taken an interest in something and had the energy to do it.

Luckily he didn't eat any of them as I don't know if they are poisonous to cats, so many plants are. Do any of you know?

Nikki

Mark-We buy a lot from the Lily Auction site.

Here is a link that might be useful: Lily Auction

Thanks so much!!! I'm going there now!!!!

Wish me luck!!!!

ok...bid on a half dozen items....we'll see!

I severely limited my buying on the LA (so far) this winter. I do have a handful of nice crosses to look forward to:

Prince of Sharon x Clarification
Funny Cide x Clarification
Spacecoast Starburst x Betty Warren Woods
Siloam Plum Tree x Starman's Quest
Spacecoast Starburst x Mama's Cherry Pie
Mama's Cherry Pie x Graham Memorial

I don't own any of these parents, so I'll get some new genes for my (very beginner-level) breeding program. I've got scads of seeds from crosses in my yard, too. I can hardly wait to see how many of last year's seedlings bloom this year!

Laurel

I was overcome by LA seed madness, and bought more than I really needed to. I tried to focus my buying on a few specific CV's. I bought a lot of Blue Hippo crosses, Bluegrass Music, God Save the Queen, and Bass Gibson. Then added a few crosses from Larry's Obsession, China Clipper and Bridey Greeson. Then moved along to just picking up crosses that tweeked my curiosity. I kept telling myself that I was done buying and then sure enough something else would show up that I really wanted. I think I'm going to be one very busy gardener this year.

Linda

Linda.. welcome to the madness we call the lily addiction. I have so many of my own seeds to plant but can't resist looking at the auction. If I could look with my hands tied behind my back that might work - but alas.. I need my one hand to click through the pages.. and that is just enough to hit the bid button..lol..
Shelly

Next time I ask for sites to get seeds...IGNORE me!

I am bidding on way too many things I cannot afford! If I win all these things...I don't know what I'll do!

Now I'll be obsessing on it for days!!!

Now to figure what lights to get for the to be built seedling racks

Suggestions anyone for a beginner???

ROFL @ zenegeos, welcome to daylily madness. And this madness is worse in the WINTER when everyone is stuck inside and bored. Good luck with your seeds. And don't worry, you won't win them all, there are others with the madness also.

Dot

Nikki42,

I don't have any first hand experience since I'm a dog person but I have heard that daylilies are very poisonous to cats. Although I have a friend who has cats that "work" in her daylily field to keep the rabbits out and they have never eaten the DL's.

Hope your kitty is ok
Ange

As for the lights...many use "shop lights" hung on chains so the height can be adjusted for growth.

One of my cats ate some of my daylily seedlings the first year I sowed them indoors. He couldn't keep them down, but he suffered no other ill effects. Still, I had to cover the indoors seedlings that year and the following (before I started winter sowing them), because B.C. isn't smart enough to just leave them alone. There's a reason we've nicknamed him "Brainless Cat!"

Laurel

Laurel, is daylily seed a good seed to wintersow, I am in zone 5. Thanks Tammy

Hah! Now we can use the excuse that we are probably rescuing each other from over zealous DL Madness (is that anything like mad cow disease?)...so I just gotta bid on that one! Let me rescue you! Too funny...lol.

Welcome Linda and zengeos! Hope you have good luck on the LA too. I'm a newbie there myself and just beginning to learn how much I really have to be willing to spend if I want one of those crosses from a 2006/7 intro parent!

My only advise is that when you see something you may be interested in, search for it on the closed auctions to get an idea of what it's gone for in the past. Another thing you can do is to check out the parentage lines with a search on Tinkers daylily db. That has given me an idea of what the parent plants have to offer as well as sibling names. I've been able to win several lesser known offspring/siblings of a hot parent plant I was initially interested in and for a more reasonable price. Good enough for starters.

Myself, I'm done now with seeds. Have more than I intended to buy but from great parents that I could never have afforded. I'm swearing off the LA seeds for this year because now I'm going to have to figure out where to put some 100+ seedlings this spring....%-) hmmm, how many have said that before?

To give my obsession a fix I'm going to put pix of the parents together on calendar pages and print them out for my office wall so that I can look at them until spring...

Crosses added to my initial list:
SOME SWEET DAY x SP STARBURST
ART GALLERY MIST x LAVENDER DUSK
LADY BETTY FRETZ x TIERRA DEL FEUGO
SPACECOAST SHARP TOOTH x WISEST OF WIZARD
KANSAS KITTENS open pollinated

As far as suggestions on lights, etc. for beginners. My idea is keep the cost down until I know if I'm going to do this again. I rigged a shelf/growing unit a few years ago for starting other plants and I intend to use it again. It was relatively inexpensive $45 plastic shelf unit from Home Depot and tye-wrapped a $15 grow light (also HD) under each shelf. I figure that's enough for a first year attempt. When I used it before I set it up in a spare bathtub to keep the mess down. Now several of the lights are burned out & it's shared storage for kid's toys so I don't know exactly how I'm going to set it up this time. Will give me something else to think about instead of the LA....

Nikki, there is a lot of confusion about the toxicity of hemerocallis. Many people confuse daylilies with true lilies, lilium. There are many plants which are toxic, but, fortunately, most are not appetizing (to us or our pets).

Daylilies are edible. I, myself, have eaten a daylily flower and am here to tell you about it. One of my cats insists on sitting in the window in the winter with my daylily seedlings and nibbles on them. He is my healthy one! It is my other cat, who doesn't touch the daylilies, who has all kinds of health issues (allergies being the latest in a long list).

On page 99 of An Illustrated Guide To Daylilies published by the American Hemerocallis Society (available for a small fee on the AHS website) it says, "Almost all parts of the dayliliy except the root are edible, although there are some cautions." It goes on to explain that "the young, new pure white tubers attached to the root can be eaten raw in salads or cooked in Chinese dishes..." (Please read the entire section to make sure you fully understand.)

In addition, it talks of using the young shoots as an early green or stir-fry vegetable. "If you choose to use the young shoots, be careful when harvesting them to make sure you are getting the right plant. The young shoots of daffodils, narcissus and iris, which are poisonous, somewhat resemble daylily shoots."

It is Chapter Sixteen for those that have the book(let) entitled "The Culinary Delights of Daylilies" and includes two recipes that use daylily buds.

I hope your seedlings and your cat recover and do well. Take care now.

Here is a link that might be useful: Scroll Down to see the book(let)

Spacecoast Starburst seems to be a favorite parent of alot of people. Here are some seedlings from 2006 seeds bought on the LA involving SC SB. Hope you enjoy them.

Spacecoast Starburst x Mort Morss

SC SB x Mort Morss

SC SB x Sea of Cortez

SC SB x Mort Morss

SC SB x Alexa Kathryn

Great looking seedlings virgo45. I'm always amazed at how different seedlings from the same cross can look. One of things that makes daylilies so fascinating to me. Curious to know how many seeds of the SC Starburst X Mort Morss cross did you plant to come up with those beauties you posted? SC SB x Alexa Kathryn and SC SB x Sea of Cortez are also quite pretty

Hi Opnjmprs:

I checked my records and I planted 5 seeds of SC SB x MM and 3 of the five germinated and flowered last season. They are all different in colour but all share some of the characteristics of the parents. I like the cross but have not seen it on the LA this year. Thanks to all for your comments.

Virgo45,
Thank you so much for posting your auction seedlings!

Your results are very encouraging. SC SB certainly passes the best of it's qualities to it's offspring.

It's amazing that you have 3 beauties out of just 5 seeds in a cross. Intriguing how the parent's colors blended differently in each seedling yet none are muddy.

The other 2 crosses are lovely too. Did you have more seedlings to evaluate in those crosses?

Thanks everyone for your posts about my cat pulling out seedlings--I'm pleased to say that he has suffered no ill effects from the seedlings.

He is feeling very sorry for himself otherwise as he was diagnosed with degenerative bone disease in his back legs shortly before Christmas and has had the first of two operations where they had to cut the top off his leg bone off and create a false hip joint using his own soft tissue.

He has to have the same operation on his other leg in a few weeks time, after which he will need a few weeks to recover but should be able to run about again within a few months. The poor lad is only 20 months old!

Now I want to try and breed a daylily in brown and white combinations (he's a chocolate-silver Ocicat) and name it after him as he is being very brave!

Thanks again for your best wishes and advice,

Nikki (and Zola)

There were three other seedlings in the collection. A second check of my records tells me that 4 of the 5 seeds of SC SB x MM germinated and flowered, not 3 as stated above, my apologies for the error. Here are pictures of the other three in the collection.

SC SB x Sea of Cortez

SC SB x MM

SC SB x American Freedom

Whoever started the LA site is evil I tell you. Evil!!!

I amn turning into a Lily Auction fool!

Somebody stop me!

Perhaps I should have started with a few seeds rather than 20 auctions.

sigh.

Aw, but Mark, ain't it fun? LOL You might as well sit back and enjoy the ride, cause for sure, you're hooked now, just like the rest of us addicts!!! LOL
Have you won any yet? I won three auctions today for dbl fans of some beautiful dl's and still have two more that are ending later tonight. :)
Jan

Nikki,
Glad to hear you kitty is not suffering ill effects from the dl. Hope he gets through his surgeries OK.

Virgo45,
Thanks for posting again. It's hard to tell w/my monitor but those last too look like near-whites. I would not have imagined that from their parents other than just that you are working in the pastel range which I'd suspect near whites being more common there than say in a darker red/purple range.

Mark, good luck with your auctions. I've noticed that traffic seems slower on the auctions after 1/1. I've seen a couple other posts here that a few people are trying to lay-off the auction frenzy until spring. At least one seller has told me she does not plan to offer more auctions this year. Maybe someone who has been around the auctions longer could enlighten us if that's an annual pattern. It certainly means that the bidding wars are less frequent so maybe there's a chance to get what you want at the basement prices?

Virgo45....Thanks for posting pix of your seedlings. Seeing those has boosted my optimism. Hoping that this years seedlings will have a few keepers among them.

Mark....my resolve to stay off the LA died some time ago and so has my bank account. I even resorted to selling some of my handbags on ebay so I could buy seeds. At times I have come close to selling anything that isn't glued down, and even entertained the thought of auctioning off my teenage son, but I don't think anyone would bite as he is too glued to his computer. So good luck with your auctions and with your resolve to keep your bidding under control.

Tweety... I'm just bidding on seeds right now, to play with them...won 12 or so auctions so far, with a half dozen yet to close.

I sure hope these seeds grow/germinate ok for me.

yikes!

zengeos = nervous as a long tail cat in a room full of elephants