Michael Georges' Presentation to the ODS October 26th, 2002

Mike began his presentation by explaining that his primary interest is in hybridizing daylilies and as a result his gardens are primarily functional rather than decorative in nature. He has several large beds lined out with first and second year seedlings, however, most of his breeding stock is maintained in pots.

His main hybridizing focus is to work on producing good gold edges with fringing, hooks and ruffles. To this end, some of his most heavily used parents include Dream Machine (Carr, 2000), Victorian Lace (Stamile, 1999) and Lace Cookies (Kaskel, 1998). Based on some of the seedlings he showed, he is already well on his way towards accomplishing his objective! Mike showed a number of beautiful pastel cream to melon-pink seedlings with heavy ruffling and strong gold edges. His #2009 is already tagged as a possible future introduction should he decide to go that route.

A secondary hybridizing focus for Mike is to produce seedlings that will flower within their first year, which would give northern breeders an opportunity to compete with those from the south. Out of his 900 or so seedlings that were started in December either under lights or in a greenhouse, he had approximately 10% bloom this year. His first Year one seedling bloomed on July 23rd roughly 8 months from seed! These were not wimpy first year blooms either. Many scapes showed 2 and 3 way branching and were early and strong enough that Mike confidently set pods on these young plants. He made it clear that he does not accept the conventional wisdom not to set pods on new or first bloom plants.

Mike uses 5 gallon plastic pails for his primary breeding plants. The pails are drilled for drainage and are filled with a combination of compost, peat moss and topsoil. There are a number of important benefits with this system. First the soil in the pots warms up earlier in the year giving the plants a head start compared to those still in the ground. The other big advantage is that the pots are mobile, so plants can be placed in full sun to maximize growth and scape development, then they can be moved to a shaded location under some trees for optimal pod set when they bloom. He even has the luxury of moving some very special plants into an enclosed sunroom so he can set pods when rain is threatened or to protect pods when frost is in the forecast.

Mike admits that his methods are somewhat labour-intensive and certainly not for everybody but you cannot argue with his results. This year his pod-set was so good that he produced over 5,000 seeds from which to select the next generation of early bloomers. Mike has a very impressive and exciting program. We look forward to seeing his first introductions.

By Dave Mussar