Selecting Seedlings

Selecting seedlings can be a mind boggling task. It is easy to find a pretty face among the seedling, but one should not let that pretty face turn your attention away from the plant itself. What do you look for in a daylily you want to grow in your garden ? This is what you should be looking for in your seedlings. Myself I first look at the flower. Doesn't everyone? Next I want some good branching and bud count. Although bud count can be somewhat on the low side it can have instant rebloom giving you a longer bloom time. I had rather have a daylily with 15 buds that blooms two or three time than one with 40 that all bloom out within a matter of a few weeks. So I am going to show an example of a selected seedling and hopefully you will see why it was selected.  This is a image of a third year seedling. It was dug and potted after maiden bloom. Left in the pot until second year bloom. Now this year I will be observing it out in the garden again.

Notice how tall it is and how well branched. Also notice the rebloom scape that has not yet had a pod set on it. You can see it is very fertile also. Nice arching foliage too. Basically just overall good plant habit.

Raspberry Beret X Border Music

Not a bad looking bloom either.
But one more good thing about this seedling is that it has thrown me some really pretty babies too. I should see quite a few new babies from it bloom this year. Below you will see images of three babies from this seedling that I will be looking at for second time this year.

(Raspberry Beret x Border Music) X Sense Of Wonder 

 If a seedling doesn't have at least three way branching it will not get to go to the selected bed, But it might be used for a bridge plant with something like the above

seedling to give it that branching. Actually I have waited until the bloom is gone. Being able to see only the branching a bud scars and choosing that plant for the selected garden. Have to wait until it blooms again to see if it has any other trites that I might want to keep going forward with.

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Final test will be for hardiness. All my selections are tested in So. IL where there are some very harsh winters. Well this year we had a harsh winter. With four snows and temps as low as 10 degrees. All of these seedling have come back and multiplied well.

(Raspberry Beret x Border Music) X Sense of Wonder