Confessions of a Hybridizer: The Big Edit
In my last post , I talked about daylilies. More specifically, I talked about hybridizing daylilies. The act of hybridizing is super easy. What follows in the coming years sometimes isn't. One of the best pieces of advice I got from a local hybridizer was to be brutal. Don't save every seedling; few will be truly worth keeping. Are you KIDDING ME?! After all the waiting--about three years--to even get to see what you've got... and now I should maybe throw it away?! Absolutely. Much like a good writer, one of the greatest lessons any gardener can learn is to edit. As Elizabeth Lawrence once said, seeking out good plant material is as important as getting rid of the bad (super duper paraphrasing; sorry, Libba). When a friend of hers was lamenting a poorly performing plant in their garden, Libba asked, "Are you cruel enough to be a gardener?" I think about that quote so, so often. When my seedlings bl...