"Get with the Program"

A Twelve Step Program for Novice Hybridizers

By Becki Pavlik

So, you've been seriously bitten by the daylily 'bug'. You've collected daylilies and aimlessly dabbed pollen on every one that you own. You've ended up with a few hundred seeds or maybe thousands and have no idea where you're going to plant them.

It doesn't take but a few years of pollinating to come to the point that you have a serious problem on your hand. Either you've run out of growing space or you have acreage that is overrun by huge beds of daylily cultivars or seedling babies everywhere and you're simply exhausted and overwhelmed. You're running yourself ragged from walking 10 miles a day to do your daily pollinating, watering, fertilizing or just to see what is blooming that day. Ah, maybe you need to have a program!

Exactly what is a 'Program'? Simply put, a program is a focus; your goals. What do you hope to accomplish and why does one need to work towards anything at all? I've asked seasoned daylily hybridizers as well as novices and come up with some pretty interesting schools of thought.

One group is happy just having created a daylily from scratch. Maybe they have no inclination whatsoever to ever register their creation and are content just with the challenge of creating. There are those too who glean a great deal of satisfaction from creating a daylily they can name after a loved one or themselves, sometimes even regardless of the fact that there are already other daylilies registered that look just like it. Right or wrong, many of us started out this way.

Then there are those who have jumped into the next level and set their sights higher. It's not enough to just create. Maybe they want to realize the next big breakthrough in hybridizing such as the first pure white, blue or black that actually looks white, blue or black according to a color wheel.

Wherever you stand in your hybridizing, a program can save you some serious time, money and aggravation. Here are 12 suggestions in no particular order that have been shared with me by seasoned hybridizers to help the novice find their way.

(1) Do your homework. Start with the registered daylilies you already have and learn everything there is to know about them. With the ease of the internet, you can Google the name of your cultivar and usually come up with a source from which to gather the information that you'll need such as ploidy, form, height, size of bloom, whether it's a rebloomer, fragrant, when it blooms and most importantly, its parentage. Why do you need to know this? If you were going to bake a cake from scratch, you would need to know what ingredients are needed and what role each ingredient plays in the final product. The same thing goes with using a cultivar as breeding stock. Do your homework and learn what it can bring to your breeding table. The same applies to any cultivars you contemplate adding to your inventory.

(2) Research. Study the color wheel. Learn what colors make what. Learn which traits and plant habits are dominant or recessive. Information is all around us at libraries, in books and on the internet. Again, Google!

(3) Make decisions. What you want to achieve is up to the individual. The objective is to have a goal and to focus on achieving that goal. As you'll learn, it's very easy to get side-tracked. There's nothing wrong with changing your program along the way as you become more knowledgeable. Many hybridizers have more than one program. Just know what yours is and realize that the more programs you have, the easier it might be to get overwhelmed.

(4) Stay focused. We've all been swayed at one time or another in our lives by pretty faces. But a hybridizer must look past the pretty wrapping paper of the bloom to evaluate what lies within. There are many attributes to take into consideration besides the color of the bloom that will play out in the seedlings you create. The old saying "If I always do what I always did, I'll always get what I always got." definitely applies to hybridizing daylilies. Try to focus on improvements, not duplication.

(5) Avoid temptation. This goes hand in hand with staying focused. Don't be tempted to buy what has nothing new to offer your program or something that was just on sale. Taking hand- me-down cultivars from others can be just as detrimental if they don't contribute to your program.

(6) Learn when and what to ' cull'. Sooner or later, the day comes when you realize somebody's gotta go. You're out of growing room. You realize that some of your cultivars or seedlings have little if anything to bring to your new 'program'. Maybe you've sadly learned that there are already dozens of yellow daylilies registered that look exactly like your Stella look-alike seedling. Take a serious look at the homework you've done on your older cultivars as well as the stats you've kept of your seedlings for a few seasons. Get rid of slackers. Give them away, sell them or dispose of them. There are plenty of folks that simply want a nice land scape plant that would appreciate them.

(7) Search your soul for a ruthless attitude. There are several circumstances I've shared that force a new hybridizer to come around to the notion of implementing a program and the benefits that a program can reward one with. I've been told by some of the more experienced hybridizers that having a ruthless attitude in evaluating your seedlings is proportional to the degree of success one will ever attain in reaching their goals.

(8) Find folks you can learn from. Gardeners and hybridizers LOVE to share. Seek out the places they hang out at and ask lots of questions. Message boards, discussion groups, local daylily societies are bursting with information. Don't be afraid to seek out a mentor. I've never met a hybridizer yet that didn't love to talk about their babies. Some people are afraid to ask questions but the fact is that asking questions saves time, money and disappointment.

(9) Keep meticulous records. Whether it is as simple as a three-ring notebook or as elaborate as a software program, you need a method of organizing facts. Speaking from experience, notes written on little pieces of paper quickly become mountains of disorganization. You might start a pedigree or stud notebook like a family history where you've charted the ancestry of each of the cultivars you have. You might also create a notebook in which you've made separate pages for each of your cultivars that includes a photo of each as well as their pertinent statistics. Of course this can all be achieved in a software program or both. The bottom line is that you will need easily accessible, organized data from which to plan and track your crosses.

(10) Don't be afraid to explore unchartered territories. Somewhere along the line there really was a day when there were only orange ditch lilies. Look how far the world of daylilies has come! I've heard it said that everything has already been done in the daylily arena. This is probably what many told Dr. Stout. Fear of failure and ridicule is what sets the successful hybridizers apart from the wannabes.

(11) Learn when to lead and when to follow. If you've applied the suggestions already mentioned, you've already followed many that have gone before you. If you study the registered offspring of any older cultivar, you may already have noticed that cultivar A has been bred with cultivar B and cultivar C has been attained. Why start from scratch and go there again if it's already been exploited? There's no point in re-inventing the wheel. Take advantage of the work already accomplished by the pioneers in the business and build on it. One doesn't have to invest a fortune in new stock as many new discoveries are being made today by breeding the leaders of yesterday to the promises of tomorrow.

(12) Remember that all work and no play makes for a boring and f rustrating day. Don't let the burden of your hybridizing responsibilities make your program. Take time to smell the roses, so to speak, only daylilies. Make an appointment if necessary, to stop, sit, relax and enjoy the fruits of your labor!