Archive for July, 2010

Here is a situation that you may have to meet. You have a plant you want to cross with another, but the early-flowering one threatens to be devoid of bloom before the second plant comes into flower. You can deal with this by storing pollen for a few days in a cool, dry room. I have kept amaryllis and gloxinia pollen for 5 days in a drugstore vial kept in the refrigerator.

A surer method is this:

1. Place several grains of calcium chloride in a glass vial.

2. Make a wad of non-waxed paper and stuff it in the vial

directly above the calcium chloride.

3. Wrap the pollen in plain, non-waxed paper.

4. Place the pollen packet in the vial on top of the wad of

paper, thus preventing direct contact with the chemical.

5. Store in a refrigerator.

Although you need but a few granules of calcium chloride, you may have to purchase it in half-pound lots. The cost however is low, about 75 cents for this amount. Pollen thus stored keeps from 1 to 3 months, depending on type.

One grain of pollen makes but one seed, so whenever possible, give the stigma a thorough coating of pollen to encourage heavy seed bearing.

The mechanics of hybridizing are simple, as I have shown in the chapters on special plants. Apply the powdery pollen from one plant (the staminate or male parent) to another, the mother or pistilate parent. The plant receiving the pollen will (if the pollination is successful) be the seed-bearing parent.

For your first work in plant breeding, you will probably select closely related plants, merely crossing them for a change in flower color or foliage form. As you advance, however, you may go a step further and select plants that are not so closely related. Here you must be prepared for meager success at the outset and perhaps for quite a while, but if you do develop intergeneric crosses, you generally have something very new indeed in the plant world.

Some flowers have the ability to self-pollinate. To safeguard against this, prepare your seed-bearing parent by cutting off petals and pollen-bearing anthers-the process known as emasculation. For success, you should know when the stigma is ready to receive the pollen. In African violets the signal is the appearance of a tiny white blob on the tip of the stigma; in gloxinias the stigma spreads to reveal an opening. In rechsteinerias and many other flowers, the pistil elongates, reaching out over the petals and almost invariably showing a white tip. Many flowers have a drop of sticky substance on the stigma when they are ready for pollination. In amaryllis, the pistil elongates and divides into three parts.

If possible, choose a sunny day for pollinating-especially with African violets: you will find that the pollen becomes more powdery and easier to handle.

If you are working on special crosses, bag the pollinated pistil with cellophane or slip a large soda straw over it and bend the end of it shut. This will avoid introducing foreign pollen carried by insects or brushed on with your hand as you water or handle plants.

With special crosses, it is important to keep records. Tag the pollinated flowers with a slip of paper (or use a stationary tag) on which you have detailed the following information: names of seed and pollen parents, date of pollination. If you plan much plant breeding, enter these data in a record book. Such records are valuable, and you will surely need them if you register or sell the offspring of a cross.

Hybridizing, or plant breeding, offers many profit-making opportunities to the new as well as the experienced grower. It is in this field that your greenhouse is most essential-an indispensable time- and money-saver for you. Many of the varieties you originate will appeal to the “dessert market”-collectors and other gardeners who, unmindful of cost, want to have the latest thing. You will find some of these customers in your vicinity, but you may have to rely mainly on mail-order sales.

Commercial men who stock new and different plants may provide an outlet for your hybrids. Still another possibility is supplying smaller dealers with stock on terms whereby you receive a percentage of sales.

My Greenhouse-Grown Hybrids

I have developed a number of unusual hybrids-gloxinias, African violets, and amaryllis-but my most salable plants are my gloxineras. These are intergeneric crosses between rech-steinerias and sinningias. But I don’t spend nearly as much time on hybridizing as I’d like to-and that apparently is the case with most other greenhouse growers. Thus the field is wide open-the market for new pot plants has never been better, and competition here is all but nil. Why not set your hands to hybridizing some of your plants? They can help you get a better profit from your greenhouse if you give them a chance.

Many Plants Can Be Tried

One greenhouse grower in Missouri makes a profit from creating new varieties of ferns. Others in the same area developing and selling hybridized African violets and gloxinias. An Oregon grower has produced a strain of hardy azaleas-all started from seeds in the greenhouse. Amateur as well as professional greenhouse gardeners have developed new chrysanthemums-some as seedlings, others as mutants.

I can’t possibly give the whole story of the “how-to, when-to, what-to-do” of plant hybridizing. But the following ideas should at least give you a start.