... growing and hybridizing all kinds of plants in zone 6b Maryland since the 1980's.

Friday, April 20, 2012

MR1 - 1/4 Rosa carolina

Pretty healthy and a nice color. If only it rebloomed...

('Fragrant Cloud' x Rosa carolina) X 'Carefree Sunshine'

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Sweet Scented Irises

Even if this one weren't so eye-catching, I'd probably still always keep it around. It has a great strong sweet smell that it probably got from its mama (Iris pallida 'Kupari'). It got the plicata color pattern from its papa (the Miniature Tall Bearded 'Rosemary's Dream'). Ive used this seedling as a parent quite a bit and thankfully, many times the sweet scent carries down through the generations.


Here are two of its sweet scented offspring:


Vesca Strawberry Project Update

First picture shows the "White Clubhouse" vesca strawberry hybrid coming out of dormancy. They've really filled that space in. The second and third pictures are two of the offspring from "White Clubhouse" pollen on "Red Wonder" alpine. These runners are more than I can keep up with. I've been trying to turn them all back into the "pots" and peg them down to make more plants. I lost count but each plant has probably made around a dozen runners each and the earlier rooted plantlets are making their own runners now. The biggest plant has just started to send up flower buds too - see red arrow on picture. I need to get these into the ground so they can do what they want to do... SPREAD AND FLOWER!

Keep in mind each seedling is only a little more than 4 months old from a tiny seed.



Small Grains

Wheats, rye and barley... looking good. Can hardly wait to see how much variability there might be among the second generation wheat crosses.

'Superba' Lilac

I think the name goes something like this: Syringa pubescens var. microphylla 'Superba'. I got mine from ForestFarm nursery a couple years ago. I had this lilac years ago when I lived at my parents' house. I liked it so much that I had to get one again for here. It never fails to bloom again lightly in the Fall - I'm pretty sure I posted about it Fall 2011. I took a picture of the plant from the window inside, so the quality isn't the greatest, but at least it gives you an idea how it looked after I clipped a bunch of clusters off for inside. The second and third pictures are close-ups of the flowers. As I type this I can smell it clearly and the vase is a good ten feet away from me. Mmmmmm!!!


Easter Pumpkins

Well, the one Jack-O-Lantern type still left on the fireplace was just starting to get soft on one side while the 'Butternut Squash' and 'Neck Pumpkin' look like they could go another couple of months easily. I cut the pumpkin to save the seeds for planting and processed the other two for "pumpkin" puree. The 'Butternut' was around 3 lbs and the 'Neck Pumpkin' was around 10 lbs. After baking they made 8 sandwich bags (2 cups of puree in each) and there was still a little over a cup left in the bowl. So I made a batch of bread dough with the puree as the liquid part - didn't follow any recipe but it's kind of like the squash braid recipe I've used a few times before. Used the dough to make a pizza crust for a sauceless ("white", or "yellow" in this case) pizza. I took some pictures and will try to post them when I get a minute.
Pumkin on April 11

Butternut and Neck Pumpkin on April 14