Back on October 5, 2009, Diana and I were most privileged to visit the Tri-Cities Daylily Society which is located in Kingsport, Tennessee. We were invited by our friend, Ms. Susan Okrasinski, and it was just a wonderful trip. Another friend that we made durin
g the trip to Kingsport was John Wagner. John spoke so well in favor of Joiner's daylily, BIG KISS. John wanted me to try to get it converted, and last year I gave my "best effort." However, each plant that I tried to treat kept throwing up new fans from the bottom of the daylily. This happened with every plant, and of course as you would expect, I lost every effort in my conversion work. It was so sad. Then this past fall I separated the plants again, one fan to a pot, and I tried again to get it converted. I'm showing a picture of BIG KISS so that you will know what it looks like. It is a lovely double.I started drying BIG KISS on January 16, 2010. I left it to dry until I treated it beginning on February 11, 2011. I treated it, but none of
the five (5) plants that I tried to convert took/absorbed the Colchicine except for Plant No. #3, which absorbed only a small amount. Then, I treated the plant for four more days: that is, from February 13 through February 16, 2011. On Feb. 13 I treated 
the plants twice. On Feb. 14 I treated the plants three times. On Feb. 15 I treated the plants twice. On Feb. 16 I treated the plants only once in the morning. So, it seemed to me that the plants took/absorbed plenty of Colchicine. Sometimes when so much of the chemical is used, the plants will just die. However, a
ll of the plants have done very well. I'm going to show Plant No. #1, and particularly show the plant after it was "trimmed," and then show the plant after it was first treated with Colchicine. Finally, I'm showing a picture of Plant No. #1 as it appeared yesterday in the Greenhouse.I have pictures of the other four (4) BIG KISS plants that I treated, but the photographs are basically the same as I've shown for Plant No. #1. So, I will go forward to what Plants #2, #3, #4, and #5 looked like as of yesterday morning. Yesterday was March 18, 2011. The only plant that I am particularly concerned about is, indeed, Plant No. #1. If you enlarge the picture of Plant No. #1 you can see a shoot emerging from the soil. Ordinarily I would think that this would mean that the conversion work will fail. However, the treated portion of the plant is so large that I am thinking that the emerging plant will not be a problem. Here are the pictures of Plants #2 through #5:
All of the foilage on all five plants is "very hard." I am very hopeful that this time I will accomplish the goal of my friend John, and get BIG KISS converted. Converting BIG KISS should help to produce better dormant doubles in the colder climates. I will keep you posted as I continue to move through this work.
Bill
Hey great to see (read) that things are going great. With the troubles you've had with converting BK I can see why there isn't one done yet. Hopefully you can accomplish it. I too think that it could open the dbl field up to great dbl dormant.
ReplyDeleteHi John! Thanks so much for your note. I'm convinced that I've got it converted, but then I'm always an optimist. Thinking back on my experience with BK, I think that since it came out of your garden, with your very cold weather, the plant was anxious to grow from every point of the plant. It didn't settle down until it had been under my less severe weather conditions for over a year. I Will let you know when I ultimately see the pollen with my microscope. Hope that you can see springtime close by.
ReplyDeleteBill