Archive for September, 2010

If you plan on doing your own hybridizing, it is best to purchase a few of the best varietiesthose awarded the Stout Medal or those remaining consistently high on the Popularity Poll listing. Catalogs frequently list both of these. Seed of the wonderful pink and melon-colored daylilies is becoming easier to obtain. You can get information on award winners-and about daylilies in general-by joining The American Hemero-callis Society, 416 Arter Avenue, Topeka, Kansas. The Society publishes three small quarterlies and a large, illustrated, yearbook issue.

Rooting Proliferations

Use your greenhouse, too, for rooting daylily proliferations (small plants growing out of the flower scape). You will naturally want to propagate rare varieties as rapidly as possible. Cut the proliferations from the mother plant, place them in sphagnum moss or moist sand, and set them in the greenhouse. Here they grow rapidly and will continue to grow all winter. You will have blooming plants from them the following season. Otherwise you would have to wait 2 or more years for them to flower.

Southern Daylilies in a Northern Greenhouse

I have had gift plants of daylilies arrive from the South in November. This is too late to plant them out in my garden. These plants, being potted, continue growth in the greenhouse. Since most Southern-bred daylilies contain evergreen growth factors, they seldom die back in the greenhouse but remain green. They flower in early spring, long before our garden-grown daylilies.

Rosebushes in the greenhouse

Growing roses for cut flower production is generally unprofitable for the owner of a small greenhouse. However, if you wish to stock and sell cut roses as part of your retail florist operation, it will pay you to make arrangements for a supply of cut roses from a reliable grower or wholesale house.

You can make a nice profit on rosebushes, especially with an unheated greenhouse, by purchasing dormant plants and starting them into growth-or even into bud and bloom-for resale to home gardeners. You can buy them already potted or you can purchase bare-root bushes and pot them up yourself.

The container most widely used is a length of tar paper, cut and fitted to form a cylinder with a bottom, and held together by staples. An opening for drainage must be left in the bottom. Wh’en dealing with bare root roses, cut away enough of the roots of each plant so that when it is placed in the container, roots will just touch the walls. Use good fibrous, porous, potting soil such as a mixture of loam and peatmoss. Place a layer of charcoal at the bottom of the container, and then start building a mound of earth in the middle. Place the center of the rootstock on top of this mound. Fill the sides of the container with soil and cover the rootstock until the knobby graft union is about 1/2 inches above the soil. Water thoroughly and your potted rosebush is on its way.

In your selling (and advertising), you should promote the many advantages to the gardener in purchasing potted, growing stock. He can be certain the plants are alive, and if the plants are in bloom, he can be sure of getting exactly the colors he wants. Among the well-known rose growers in our city is Mrs. Alice Foss, who attends every annual convention of the American Rose Society. After viewing the newest in roses, she places orders for spring delivery. The bushes arrive in late February and early March. Mrs. Foss fitted up a shed with windows to let in all possible light and furnished it with potting benches. Here she works in comfort while potting up the roses. While the house is not artificially heated, the windows admit sunlight from morning until night. The rosebushes are safe here, and continue growing until the time arrives for gardeners to come by and pick up their orders.

A low priced plastic house of almost any type would also be ideal for this type of rose growing.

There is a big field in the hybridizing of daylilies. Recently I attended a gathering of enthusiasts where some new varieties were being auctioned off. One brought $150.00! This was, of course, a rather rare exception, but the majority of new named varieties do sell for $25.00 to $50.00 per clump.

Daylilies from Seed

Daylilies are somewhat easier than iris to grow from seed. Pollination is simple and the seed pods ripen in about 6 weeks.

Southern growers simply plant the seed outdoors, and many of them germinate and become established seedlings before chilly winter weather arrives. The seedlings, able to grow through the entire season, usually flower within 12 to 18 months.

In the North, our growing season is so short that, without the aid of a greenhouse, daylilies may take 3 years to flower from seed. Seed planted in the fall and kept in active growth throughout the winter in a greenhouse will ofttimes flower the next fall or, at the latest, the following summer, thus trimming 1 to 2 years off the normal time from seed to flower. I like to plant daylily seeds in flats some time in November and place the flats outdoors, stacking them one on the other. In February, some of the flats are brought in to the greenhouse and within 10 days to 3 weeks, flats become dotted with green seedlings. (Incidentally, if you lack upper bench area you can slip the flats under your fluorescent lights.) The daylily seedlings can grow right on in the flats or bulb pans until it is time to transplant them into the garden.

When transplanting, cut at least half of the foliage back to make sturdier plants.

Selling iris rhizomes can make money for you. While the older varieties go for as little as 50 cents a rhizome, newer hybrids bring from $5.00 to $25.00 or more per rhizome. You can sell rhizomes directly from your garden, or take them from your garden and force them in the cool greenhouse; you can also purchase and divide clumps; or grow iris from seed.

If you plan on dividing and selling iris from your garden, divide clumps in early fall and plant the divisions in the cold frame. In early spring, remove them from the frame, bring them into the cool greenhouse, and pot the rhizomes separately. You’ll start selling them when they are in bud or bloom in April or May.

If you want to sell the newest varieties, order them wholesale for fall or spring delivery. Handle the fall-delivered ones just as though you had dug them from your own garden. As soon as you receive your spring orders, pot them up in gallon cans or pots made from building paper.

Iris from Seed

It takes patience to raise iris from seed, for the seed may take a year or more to germinate. However, if you have hand-pollinated some of your best stock or have purchased seeds of good stock, you will find that growing them on in the greenhouse speeds the process. If you plan to sell iris as part of your nursery program, you will find this is the cheapest method of acquiring a large number of colors and forms.

Seed can be planted any time of year. Spring sowing can be done in flats or pots and the plantings then placed outdoors. Kept well watered, seeds usually germinate during the summer. If they fail to sprout, wait until the temperature dips to at least 40 degrees and thoroughly chills the plantings before bringing them into the greenhouse. Fall-sown seed can be placed outside and left to chill or even freeze. After this, bring the containers into the greenhouse. Germination will be spotty, but your seedlings will have sufficient start so that they can be transplanted to a cold frame or directly into the garden in early spring. Plants grown this way usually flower the second year, thereby saving a year of valuable time for the hybridizer.

I have had success germinating iris and hemerocallis (day-lily) seeds by half-filling the ice trays in the refrigerator with water and inserting two or three seeds in each cubicle. When the half cube of ice forms, I fill the rest of the tray with water and let the seeds freeze. About a week after this severe treatment, I thaw out the ice cubes and plant the iris seeds in bulb pans of sterilized loam, peatmoss, and sand, which then go into the greenhouse. Temperatures need not be as high as those in my greenhouse-55 to 60 degrees is about right. But I do get good results from this method. However, freezing seeds is not recommended for Louisiana iris.