Back to the basics

 When I first started this blog I had hoped to make it informative as well as a semi-daily account of my own gardening situation. The information part of it has been pushed aside due to my own mental and monetary issues. 

So due to not much going on in the garden I 'll address a gardening topic that I hope is either informational or amusing or inspiring.

Let's first say that I took the scraps from the kitchen to the garden, mostly coffee, an egg shell and a few scraps of celery. Not very inspiring or nutritious but it's what I  have and combined with the leaves, we'll see what I have in a few months. I then watered everything despite not bringing the nozzle down with me.

 The raised bed is basically the same, threw some water on there as well and it's compressing nicely though I do hope I can get some actual soil on there soon.

Oh another thing is a surprise appearance in the garden below us. A marigold, surviving despite all odds and bad position.

Not sure how long it's been there but it's in mostly shade and in a pot but it's blooming. Due to the way it's bent over maybe she got it from somewhere else. A nice surprise at least and adds to the dark pink rose that's in bud in another bed for some lasting fall color. We're getting down into the 40's and 50's at night so nippy and in low lying areas likely some definite chill and possible frost if there's no wind and high humidity.

Now on to the informational part, let's talk breeding.

I've been seeing a lot more posts on my feed about daylily and bearded iris seedlings from growers due to me seeing one pop up and liked it and you know how that works. But it's a wonderful topic about creating new color varieties and your own new plants from letting your flowers go to seed. Or purposely crossing two varieties to see what you get.

Now the issue is with the bearded iris posts is they are from a grower in Australia which means it is summer for them which is why they are posting a lot of photos and a few videos. It's great to see wonderful new colors on flowers in the middle of winter. They list names with the pictures and who bred them I guess? Ex. 

Smoky Dusk (Keppel 16) TB

 Doing research, Keppel is the name of a breeder Keith Keppel and the 16 is the year it was registered and TB of course is for Tall Bearded. With many hybridizers of all different flowers, naming the parents of the flower gives a clue as to where the colors came from. 

Despite what we learned in high school or middle school biology, genetics are not always cut and dried with flower colors. So the parents of Smoky Dusk are "Adriatic Waves" on the left and "Hearty Burgundy" on the right:

You can see very much how the two colors combined so well to get a deep almost smoky purple. Sometimes colors don't always come up well and it will take maybe a few seasons to find just one that bred well. If you get enough seeds all the seeds may be winners. Much like any family tree you can then go through all the parentage of the parents and so on to see where the colors were derived from.  It's fun and fascinating for me really.

It's a genetic luck of the draw really with crossbreeding plants and especially flowers. Roses are even more tricky and have many more wild variations. There are breeders that only grow flowers for the florist trade which means they breed for color, bud form and length/strength of stem. Very, very few florist varieties are crossed over to the garden market because most gardeners want fragrance and stunning color. That is a rare combination in roses and the genetics of scent can be traced back to only two parent plants from the 1500's (or earlier if my memory is correct). Yellows have only recently gotten some fragrance as opposed to dark reds and purples that have had it for hundreds of years.

Iris do have scent but they aren't bred specifically for that because they are less a 'cutting' than a 'garden' flower. 

It's fun to tinker with your own crossings if you have enough flowers, knowing the right time and how to pollinate them is the key. That's too much detail for the average person but a basic knowledge of botany and plant parts is helpful.

Not going to get into GMO because that's a WHOLE other bag of chips to digest.