Seedlings showing

Well the first lily seedlings are making their way into the daylight (or fluorescent as in this case)! I am pleased so far with the growth. The pots with good growth are bulbils from a tiger like lily growing behind our University Hospital. I am still not good at identifications. Still waiting for the seed leaf of martagons and others as well.

Merry Christmas to all and may your sees grow well and your lilies bloom bright in the New Year.

Planting seeds

Wednesday I started planting lily seeds. I received 15 small lots from my gardening friend in Poland and also a couple of small lots (10 to 20 seeds)of Griesbach Tetraploid seeds from Lily at The Suburban Gardener. Then I also received some L. lankongense seed from Darm Crook. You can read about Darm over on this site.
By the way, a small lot is more than enough seed for me! It seems I am getting more than I can look after here so less is good!
As I have done in past winters, I am using Sunshine #4 mix to plant into. I just don't want to mess around with other mixes here. All seedlings get the same treatment. So I planted all the seeds and now we wait.

The pots were watered and are sitting on shelves in our furnace room/plant room. There will be lights on when the first green begins to peek out.

The weather here is quite nice (2.0 C this am) but it is causing the little snow we had to disappear ans so the main lily bed is now completely exposed. And the second area has very little cover.

Here's hoping the snow comes soon.

The last time we had this little snow was in December 1997. There were little bits of snow up to the middle of the month and by Christmas Day there was no snow!

Will it be like this this year?

I have been fighting with a torn ??? in my right shoulder but still managing to get some things planted with this long beautiful fall we are having. A month ago I bought a few bulbs at the local Lily Society fall sale. All the bulbs looked so healthy
My finds were: Bronze Queen, Salmon Cream, Lilium henryii citrinum, Doeskin, White Tiger, and Dolly Madison. A good range of color and all good sized bulbs. You can find pictures of some of them here.

There are also a number of pots of seedlings which I either need to get into the ground or under lights in larger pots!

So far there are a few selections of seeds as well to be sorted out. Actually there are some stems with large pods standing in water waiting for the pods to ripen. These are trumpets so I am going to be very pleased if they make it and have viable seed. May be a chance to share a few as well. You can see the plants in my Picasa Lily Album

Honeywood Heritage Nursery

My wife Marg and I dropped in on the Honeywood Nursery this week at Parkside, Saskatchewan. The clear ares you can see are some of the flower growing spaces. You can connect with them on this website. I was amazed at how finished blooming the fields were. All we saw was a row of yellow Asiatics "Sutter's Gold" and a few Tiger types. This variety was blooming at and in the greenhouse.

 

According to the tag this is Golden Ace. Has a nice yellow face. Another lily I found did not have a tag which was too bad. A very unique flower.

I am sure I have seen this before but I need help here. Leave your comment with the name!

Another interesting find at the farm was this tobacco plant which had been bought as a seedling at the Saskatoon Farmer's Market in spring. It grew very well here in the north central Saskatchewn.

First martagon for me

My very first martagon bloomed this year. I bought it at a Canadian Prairie Lily Society sale. It is Brocade and the blooms were somewhat small. I have a couple of seedlings but they are still very small.

Martagon lily bulbs

Bought these Martagons today from a local person in Saskatoon. Very nice collection of plant material. Hope I can visit there again.

The group of three on the left are a heritage Martagon which he says his father brought over from when they came to Canada. The other is a cream colored one which if and when it blooms it may be possible to identify.

Lilies on Picasaweb

You can see a few lilies uploaded in an album on Picasaweb. There are many bloomng right now and I hope to get some more pictures up soon. Here are couple of very nice seedlings.

Trumpets are coming!

This group of Trumpet Lilies are seedlings from Mirek in Poland. They are a great collection and this is the first year blooming in this new spot. Some have bloomed in past years so the bulbs were good size. I am rechecking the naming with the older pictures but this should be:

 


Mirek #1













 Mirek #9













 Mirek # 14












 
 Miek #15












 Mirek 9G1MZL3

Lily Ed Brooman

I have lost the tag for this one. It is about 4 feet tall and in reality a stronger rust red.

New flowers breaking

Well the next round of lilies are beginning to bloom.

This is a new seedling. I think it is from a Tango parent.

A bright little Yellow Pixie.

Tango Dot Com

Tiny Athlete












More to come in the next few days.

Pictures on the Picasa site of my Polish garden friend

There are some wonderful pictures on Miroslaw Zaniewski's Picasa Web album site. Please drop by and check them out and leave him some encouraging words!
Lilium dauricum are still blooming as are the X Hollandicum. I would like an expert to come around and confirm this name.
Trumpet lilies and Asiatics are coming soon.

Lilium dauricum and L. X Holandicum?

While the L. dauricum have been blooming for a few days and more have opened as well, now the next set of plants to open are doing just that. I have been told these are Hollandicum but they do not match anything I have found on the net. They still do a great job. The last two are the Hollandicum plants. I have about 30 of them coming in various places in the yard so should be good color here for a few days in amongst the Columbine and Jacob's Ladder, roses and flaxes.

Early here are the Lilium dauricums

Well I transplanted out of pots into rows in the garden a number of seedlings and clumps from pots. Now the rain came so they should do well. There are a few more to go. Early bloomers are the Lilium dauricums and there is not a lot of variety in this group of seedlings. I am very much looking forward to the next round which will include Asiatics and Trumpets by the looks of the buds. The light was dull and I did not have time to mess with this in a photo editor. Also my camera is just not great any more. Also a number of Lilium Hollandicum (according to a friend) should bloom next week.

Spring things

I bought 2 lilies quite early and potted them up. So now the lilies are blooming in the house.
 They are African Queen and White Twinkle. So nice to have flowers this early. There was a Lilium dauricum opened today in the lily bed so the outdoors is beginning as well.

This is White Twinkle Asiatic

This is African Queen which is a Trumpet Hybrid

Lilium dauricum seedling

A nest of seedlings from Sparra's Nest in Australia. There are 10 or so of these little seed lots. Some have quite a number of plantlets showing and some have only one. My growing technique is still in the learning stages.

I also have a few groups of seedlings from a friend in Poland but they are not planted out yet. More pictures to follow.

Lily growth and happenings

Well there are a number of things going on. I pulled the 2 bulbs which I got from China out of the soil to find there was a lot of bacterial decay. Maybe lost but there was a good green base on one bulb so I am hoping it can survive.
The Mirek #4 has produced 15 little bulbs which are doing very well. I was able to share 5 bulbs with the person who gave me the seeds.
There was a bag of leftover bulbs in the basement and they had grown so many roots so I transplanted them into 6" azalea pots (photo 2) and noticed today that they are doing quite well. I will try to get a picture soon. Several of the plants which bloomed earlier in winter had died off so I pulled them all out and re-potted them. There were several with little bulblets on the stems.
Those plants which did not bloom are still growing under the lights and doing ok although it is obviously not the best situation. Definitely looking forward to spring.

New lily bulbs arrived today

I took a chance on Ebay recently to order a couple of bulbs from China. The package arrived today and I planted the bulbs up right away. They will need to be watched as I am afraid mold could grow very easily. They are Lilium auratum according to my lily friend in Poland. The Ebay seller did not respond to my question there but I was more interested to see how they would make the trip. They look a little dried out to me but a I washed them off and put them in some potting mix.

Update for today

Seedlings continue to appear in the pots which I planted earlier in January. There are still several populations which have not come up but I am sure there will be something in due time.
I was able to transplant 3 more little plantlets from my Mirek #4 so they keep on coming.
It is so interesting to see them start a root down the stem of the mother plant. Sadly that root is quite brittle and I did break one by not being careful.

More pictures next week.

Some new babies are coming up from Mandarin orange seeds which I planted a couple of weeks ago. These were the tiny oranges in the cute little boxes. I have now planted seeds of the Ponkan oranges as well. Non of these are hardy here of course but they do make a nice indoor ornamental tree if you can keep the bugs off.