| Archive for IMPACT! MINIATURES A forum for the discussion of board games and miniatures of the company (Impact! Miniatures) |
| GalakStarscraper |
Our first attempt at a new hobbyOkay its not the most beautiful of babies.But my wife and I are starting to get into hybridization of daylilies. We just had our first attempt bloom today. Its next to its mom on the right and yeah ... mom is a LOT better looking but dad was a common mass market daylily and we were just starting out so we had expensive high class mixed with commoner genes. But I'm just so happy to have the first one bloom ... as each blooms we'll learn more about what happens when you mix X with Y and its such a mystery of what you are going to get and that is half the fun. Anyway ... picture of my wife and I's first creation. We call it Exotic Star. Exotic Candy was the mom which is a registered trademarked DayLily hybrid sold by Roycroft and created by Stamile P ( http://roycroftdaylilies.com/cultivar/164 ) and dad was a common star form daylily from Lowe's. The hybrid took the colours of mom and the petal shape of dad. The first-born: 
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| Dark Lord |
My wife is an ex-florist and a still an occasional floral designer. She's probably gonna be real chatty with you.  Although, she often says that she's 'not a gardner, she's a cutter.'
They look great tho. |
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| Lychanthrope |
Gook Looking! Now the question is can you do and get this result everytime? Will every flower look this good? Will it stay like this or revert back to Dad's genetics? Genetics are soooo fun! (Says the guy with a BA in Natural Scence) I've not looked into daylillies before so I don't know the particulars, but I'd guess that reproduction is going to be by spliting root stock or petri dish.
The main thing is to have fun and enjoy both the work and the flowers you get. Always a surprise around the corner. 
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| Lychanthrope |
I like it enough to get some for my wife's flower garden if you get to that point. | ||||||
| GalakStarscraper |
I doubt your wife ever worked with daylilies just because there name comes from the fact that each flower only last one day before it dies. So you almost never see them in floral arrangements. If you do ... that's impressive as it means the florist gambled that he would have the plant in bloom that morning to make the cutting. However despite (or maybe because) of their brief lifespan they tend to be amazing mixes of colours as they only have one day to attract a pollentator in order to reproduce. And they are one of the easiest flowers to play with for crossbreeding. So we hope to have some fun. Like I said ... its the mystery of what you'll get that makes it so fun. Galak |
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| GalakStarscraper |
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| GalakStarscraper |
But for the health of the plants they do recommend that you split the root stock every 3 to 5 years. So at some point I would guess that we'd have extra of our first baby to give away or sell (depending on how serious we decide to get). So talk to you then. 
Galak |
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| bouncergriim |
Impressive, I also love gentics. Though my only foray was with pet store guppies. But having to cull the little guys is kinda sad, unless you have a turtle to help.
But I like the result kuddos to you and your wife on the lily. |
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| Dark Lord |
No but she's a bio major and has a deep appreciation for flowers. She may have been a cutter but she loves them all. She was already looking at your babies.
Believe me, you could be making plastic flowers and she'd be interested. 
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| Lychanthrope |
To cross pollinate do you plant them next to each other and let nature take its course, or do you manually cross pollinate? | ||||||
| GalakStarscraper |
Its real obvious who dad was though based on physical location. Its the only daylily on our property that has that form (ie the thin petal star). We don't know which specific plant did it as we have 3 different bargin daylilies in that bed ... but one of them was the dad (one is yellow, one is red, and one is yellow with a red eye ... so colours on dad where completely trumped by mom's genes). Which is funny as there were at least 4 expensive daylilies right next to it (ie closer)... but the bee or bird went to the cheap seats before visiting it. My wife has joked with me that she doesn't want to see me out there ripping out her pretty cheapy daylilies to prevent them from getting into the mix for more natural crossbreedings. She likes our new one and I do to so I've promised to let them stay. We currently have about 41 different high end daylilies from Roycroft on our property and 3 different ones from the local hardware store (ie the cheap ones). We have the daylilies planted in 9 different beds in the yard but the 6 in the front are all close enough that nature could easily mix them. The 3 in back are a pretty good hike seperated from each other. The 10th bed I want to build on the weekends will be for the new hybrids we create. The next round we are going to try to be a bit more focused and start manually cross pollinating. My first serious attempt will be to cross our 2 Buttered Popcorn (bright yellow) daylilies ... one with Fooled Me (dark yellow/dark orange eye) and the other with Mauna Loa (scarlet orange) and then see what we get if anything out of that. I think by starting with mixing two solid colours on one test plant and the other a solid with a eye ... I'll see how strong the eye gene is only with how colours mix). As my first one has shown me ... its not like you can mix a yellow flower and blue flower and get a green daylily so its going to be a bit of an education in itsself. We also plan to be really good about harvesting seed pods and see what crosses God decides to create in our yard (like our first one was). My end goal plan is to have a 40' long 10th daylily bed in the backyard that is just daylily breeds that we've created on our property through either natural crossbreeding or manual help. Exotic Star (the one shown above) will be the first to join that bed. ===== For someone reading and not into flowers and wondering what this eye thing is that I'm talking about. The eye is the center of the flower. Its a big deal when the eye is a nice different colour. As you can see on the Exotic Candy. It has a green eye and then on top of that it has a bi-colour petal purple moving into pink. One of the other things that score points are petal shape ... note on the Exotic Candy how full the petals are. The last big deal is the fringe of the petals. Note on Exotic Candy it has a nice frill effect on it AND its a different colour ... tough to see on the pictures but its actually golden yellow on the fringe. Our new daylily is nice because it has the common star petal shape which means petal appearance wise it fits in very well with the daylilies one would by at the local garden/hardware store. However it grabbed from mom that great green eye to purple to pink petal coloration which is nice in a lily with that form as its very different from the standard all yellow or all red that is normally sold. Too bad it didn't grab the fringe effect or colour ... that would have been real cool. Galak |
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| GalakStarscraper |
I'll need to take pics then. Tom |
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| GalakStarscraper |
For Dark Lord's wife and anyone else who wishes to see what's in bloom at my house right now. I live only on a 0.25 acre lot .... but we try to make the most of it.
Our 3 kinds of hardware/gardening store daylilies ... one of these was the dad for my new daylily at the top of this thread 
To the right ... Saturn peaches half way to being ready to eat 
==== And the non-Daylily pics of the yard today Green Gage Plums ... still about 6 weeks from being ripe 
Red Apples ... still 2 months to go 
Mulberries growing on the tree ... ready to eat in about a week 
Aronia berries ... very healthy for you but you need about a pound of sugar to eat them. Grow these for the wildlife (ie birds) to eat as they fruit through early winter. 
Cranberries starting to ripen 
Tomatoes and peppers a growing 
Had to pick off about half the fruit from our yellow apple tree so the limbs would not break 
In our landscaping at this time we have the 44 varieties of daylilies and the fruit trees we have are: 3 types of Cherry (including my favorite a Rainer white cherry tree ... oh they are soooo good) 2 types of Pear 7 types of Apple 3 types of Pawpaw 2 types of Quince 1 Mulberry 1 Plum 1 Peach 1 Apricot We then also have the following edible berry bushes: Cranberry, Aronia, Seaberry, 3 Blueberry, 2 Strawberry |
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| Dark Lord |
When do you find time to do anything!
So do you make your own jellies and jams? How about wine? Home made fruit wines are the bomb! 
Oh and we had wild mulberries trees all along the creek near my childhood home. We would pick shirt load after shirt load and bring them back to out "forts." Oh man...I'm getting nostalgic. Oh and the wife is oohing and aahing over the daylily in the first shot. The one near the bottom of the frame. Also the white one with the purple center that is in mail box shot. |
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| GalakStarscraper |
I can help you with those two along with link if you wanted to order them: The first one you mention bottom of the first shot is Persian Ruby: http://roycroftdaylilies.com/cultivar/398 The white one with purple center by the mailbox is Border Music: http://roycroftdaylilies.com/cultivar/629 Tom |
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| fen |
That's a nice garden, it's more regimented than my prefered style. But I like to grow things in the "traditional english garden" fashion. So yours is a little more spartan compared to what I used to have (before I moved to a place with no garden at all :( ) I'm very impressed with all the fruit being grown and doubley impressed with the lawn. I'm very into lawns, I like to see them green (and striped, but that's optional). Also, out of interest how organic are your growing and pest protection methods for the fruit? | ||||||
| GalakStarscraper |
Tom |
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| Dark Lord |
Hee hee, hoo boy! did you do a 180 for my wife! She has a real and serious bird phobia. No kidding, no exaggeration. If we're walking in the park and bird swoops down near us (like within 30 feet) she ducks for cover.
I'm convinced that she's gonna die by ducking or dodging a sparrow into a bus or something. At first I thought it was a put on, but it isn't. She has some childhood trauma and now she is really terrified of them. She's as much a bleeding heart as the sun is hot, but she severely hates and fears birds. I had actually almost just convinced her that birds won't attack anything bigger than they are unless provoked and that stupid video came out of the eagle throwing the goat off a cliff. 
She's just okay if the bird is in a cage...she says "where they belong."
Anyway, good for you for not using pesticides or harmful chemicals! We are big fans of local organic produce. It seems to me things like infected tomatoes would be a very small problem if everyone bought locally. |
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| GalakStarscraper |
(note ... that is not a typo when I say my wife's birds. We have the birds because I love my wife very much and they make her happy.) Galak |
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| fen |
Fantastic, I thought you were very organic from the pictures but I wanted to ask rather than assume.
A phobia of birds is pretty high up on the irrational phobia scale (an irrational irrational fear so to speak), and as such it's acutally not that hard to treat (as long as the patient is willing). But it's also not that important to deal with either for the average person. So it's probably easiest (and certainly cheaper) to just walk on the outside (road side) of the sidewalk when out and about with her so she doesn't make an involuntary movement into the street when a pigeon swoops by. Out of interest, how is she dealing with birds standing on the floor? More, less or the same (because they could take off). |
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| Dark Lord |
Well we have a park about a block and a half away with ducks and geese all over, and of course they are used to people and even beg for food. Well she's okay enough to walk in the park but not on the pond side of the road. She even gets a bit tense if they start looking interested in us. She won't cross to the pond side even if they are in the pond and not near the road.
I'd say that 30 feet is good estimate for her buffer zone...even for harmless waddling quakers. Oh and butterflies too. But less so.
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| Lychanthrope |
Now that would make for a funny video. Some lady running from a butterfly.
Sorry, I'll try to behave for the rest of the day.
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| Dark Lord |
Well she won't exactly run from them but she gets all spazzy and swatty. She stumbles backwards and ducks.
Take a normal person's reaction to a very large wasp and that is her reaction to butterflies. She says it has something to do with the random directions they flutter about. Same with birds, she thinks they're gonna shoot in a random direction at any moment.  Then of course the swoop or dive and she's proven right.
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| Ted Striker |
Same reason you are allowed your little pewter men........ at least that is what my wife tells me :) "I love you, but your little toys are goofy." .... direct quote... |
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| GalakStarscraper |
Galak |
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