I began breeding daylilies in 1972, just three years after I began crossing bearded irises. I had no goals at the outset. I made lots of crosses in a wide range of color and shape classes; probably 1/3 of my crossing was tet at the outset. Because I basically came to prefer dips and also because I had more initial success with them, the tet breeding dwindled, actually disappearing totally for a while from 1985-1988, to come back somewhat in recent years.
In 1990 I reviewed my breeding to see where I had actually gone up to that point and decided that my crosses could be placed in four subdivisions:
* early and rebloom (lumped together because crosses in rebloom lines will often give good earlies which fail to rebloom)
* mid-season, color-clarification
* species and near-species lines
* lates
Reviewing recently in more detail where that has taken me over the last decade, I'd say I have about six main sub areas:
* rebloom lines in colors other than yellows
* early pink diploids
* early red tets
* species, near-species and spider inter-crosses
* greenish-yellows, both dips and tets, in any season
* late reds, both dips and tets
Some advances have been made in each of these categories except for early red tets, this year being the first seedling batch of this new line.
I am also doing minor crossing for brown (initial cross 1980!) Fertility problems have made this one tough, near-black (one good one, probable introduction), and green-throated gold tets. This year I plan a few diploid crosses for black eye zones and another few for broad edges a la Susan Weber (Branch). I have a purple dip line with some great clarity of color, but disturbingly poor vigor in most of the seedling batches. Not being commercial in any big way, I can afford to be properly conservative about my introductions.
