A lot of you enjoyed the Dan Robarts write up so much that I thought I would include a second write up, since there were still a lot of daylily photos I wanted to share and there was some things about Dan that I forgot to include.
I have to put in my disclaimer again and that is that ALL OF DAN'S PHOTOS ARE COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL AND REPRODUCTION WITHOUT WRITTEN CONSENT IS PROHIBITED. (If you would like to contact Dan Robarts regarding his photos, you can email him at dwhr@hotmail.com)
So, let's start out with when Dan started hybridizing, which was in the late 90's. His first seedling to ever bloom was a cross of El Desperado X Strawberry Candy. He said it had only 4 buds. Boy if I could have shown Dan a picture of the first seedling I ever bloomed. It looked like it fell off the top of the ugly tree and hit every branch coming down. I asked Dan what other hybridizers influenced him and his reply was of course Steve Moldovan and Roy Woodhall, but he also included Karol Emmerich, Curt Hanson, Melanie Mason, Pat Stamile, and Dan Trimmer. I asked Dan what some of his favorite daylilies were and they fell into two categories, favorite garden plants, which were Moldovan red/cherry blends, Widows Walk, and Ron Valente. The other category was favorite breeders, which were Vertical Horizon (Moldovan),Reach for the sky (Brooker), Arnold's Daughter (Korth), and Nick of Time (Hanson). Dan goes on to say that even though he is working on his own lines now, he likes to go back to these daylilies to breed with time and again. Dan is also concentrating on diploid lines as well.
I asked him about his experiences with breeding in the greenhouse and Dan said that greenhouses can be lovely places for hybridizing with the ability to control temperature, humidity, sunlight, etc. etc. In these optimal conditions he said that there's better seed set with more pods, and seeds per pod. Dan said the nice thing about working at the OSU greenhouse was there were two full time greenhouse managers that were in charge of pest management as well as a rotation of student workers. Dan said that insects did pop up such as aphids and spider mites, and that plants were treated with organic oil solutions and beneficial mites wherever possible.
Dan went on to say that he wants to promote and breed with other perennials in the future, primarily herbaceous perennials such as Hosta, Peonies, and spring ephemerals including Viola, Hepatica, Dicentra, and Trillium.
If you would like to see more pictures of Dan Robart's daylily seedlings you can find him on Facebook, or email him and I'm sure he would be happy to talk about his daylilies. All I can say is I really enjoy talking to Dan when I get the chance and look forward to his daylily intros in the years to come. I hope you enjoyed these photos of Dan's seedlings today.
