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| Harold Steen (Phil Korth) |
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| Judgement Day (Future intro, Phil Korth) |
I have never met Phil Korth in person, but I have enjoyed reading his articles in the AHS Journal and growing some of his intros. He has a wonderful program of northern, hardy daylilies, so I was very pleased that Phil was willing to do an interview for us. With nothing further, here is Phil's interview:
INTRODUCTION WRITTEN BY PHIL KORTH:
I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and my wife, Luel was born in Melrose, Minnesota. I went to college and began my work career in Milwaukee. I have a MS degree in Environmental Engineering from UW-Milwaukee. Luel has a BS degree in marketing from St. Cloud, Minnesota. We met while we were both working on a large wastewater project (Luel office technician, Phil engineer) in Milwaukee in 1979 and were married in 1980. Shortly after our wedding, we moved to Green Bay, Wisconsin and began our family there. I have worked as a consulting engineer from 1978 to the present although I am basically retired now. Luel had various part-time jobs but has been a full time daylily hybridizer for the past 12 years. We have two children and four grandchildren all living in the Green Bay area. We currently live in a northern suburb of Green Bay (Suamico) in a zone 4 climate.
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| Phil and Luel Korth |
Phil: In the mid 90's, my wife (Luel) and I began serious landscaping on our city lot in Green Bay. Our friend, Leo Bordeleau, is a professional horticulturist in rural Green Bay and had a good collection of daylilies. We bought 5 daylilies from him. During our social time with him, I was introduced to AHS and daylily catalogs from Bill Munson. I was fascinated by the process of hybridizing. Other perennial plants did not have genetic heritage in their description (at least the ones we were buying). I started asking how the hybridizing process worked. I made a few crosses and got some seeds. Once we started seeing new seedlings, we were hooked. My academic background is science and engineering and my personality is, "do it myself." My wife is the artist and she enjoys "painting" with daylilies. Thus we formed a good team. From 2005, all our daylilies are registered under both our names.
2. Which hybridizer introduced you to daylily hybridizing?
Phil: Leo Bordeleau introduced us to daylilies and how to hybridize. He was never as serious about it as I was and 25 years later has never registered a daylily. As we became more active in AHS, we attended regional meetings, national conventions, regional winter symposiums, and eventually spoke at many events. These interactions always resulted in new ideas and important tips in growing and hybridizing. We also went to Florida and visited some of the major hybridizers twice. They were all gracious and willing to share ideas. The people that were most influential were Karol Emmerich, Dan Bachman, and Dan Trimmer. They did not introduce us to hybridizing, that was mostly our own interest. Karol was most gracious and allowed us to visit her greenhouse in April many years as we have family in the Minneapolis area and could stop in to visit. She shared many tips and some pollen and we are grateful for her guidance.
3. What were your first goals in the beginning of your hybridizing?
Phil: Both Luel and I most enjoy large flowers with fancy edges and eyes thus we hybridized almost only tetraploids. Our goal was to make northern hardy daylilies that had the fancy edges and eyes we saw from the southern evergreen programs. We moved to our current home in 1997. Our site has 1.75 acres and good sunshine and allowed us to begin hybridizing in earnest. In 2002, we started a diploid program focusing on enhanced green throats.
Some may recall that we used to take our best plants and seedlings into our basement and grow them for hybridizing over the winter. We had up to 70 potted daylilies in our basement growing under high intensity lighting and made over 1000 seeds in winter. That worked well for several years as we established our hybridizing program. As our plants became mostly dormant and we used less southern cultivars, the winter bloom season got later as the dormants were slower to get to bloom. We quit the winter bloom season after the 2011 winter season and make all our seeds in the summer season.
4. What were some of the challenges you've faced with your hybridizing over the years?
Phil: Being a far north hybridizing program has several challenges. First, there are no significant hybridizers near us so we lacked a local support system to share and learn from. Most of our learning was done by trial and error. Second, propagation is slow in our climate and it takes 6 to 9 years from the initial seed making to introduction with the result being only about 12-15 plants available for sale. As a result, our best plants sell out quickly.
Our winters vary from heavy snow cover to little snow cover and mild temperatures (generally above zero) to severe cold with temperatures dropping below minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit. When we have little snow cover, we often lose a few plants. In 2003, before we had plant hardiness figured out, we had a whole garden bed planted with recent introductions from around the country in preparation for a 2004 region 2 annual meeting garden tour. A severe winter killed about 2/3 of the plants and we needed to fill many holes. We were just starting out in hybridizing and did not have the proven hardy plants from our own program to use. This taught us both the hazards of severe winters but also the benefit of a severe winter in culling out the weak plants. From then on, we focused on dormant genetics to survive deep frost and temperatures below minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit.
On the plus side, our far northern climate produces hardy plants and northern customers and daylily clubs feel comfortable in buying our plants knowing they will survive a cold winter.
5. How many seedlings do you grow each year?
Phil: We currently plant 1,000 to 1,200 seedlings a year. That is down from 3,000 plus seedlings per year up till 2014 when we reduced the size of our daylily garden by 50%. All work is done by Luel and I and the physical work of maintaining such a large program got to be too much. We have a more manageable size now but we are working through the last big seedling crop of 2015 for plant introductions and in future years, the number of new introductions will be reduced.
6. What are some of your favorite introductions from other hybridizers?
Phil: For the past 10 years, we have purchased very few daylilies from other hybridizers and currently have less than 10 plants that are not from our own hybridizing program. All the plants we purchased were to add some genetic variation to our program. The plants we do have are not grown for garden display, but for hybridizing only and often sold after a season or two. We can name some older plants that have been important hybridizing plants for us:
1. We used many plants from Dan Trimmer as they contained new tetraploid genetics from his conversion work. Examples are Monterrey Jack, Rapid Eye Movement, Bill Vojir, and Jamaican Love.
2. Karol Emmerich - Heartbeat of Heaven, All Things to All Men, Gnashing of Teeth, and Entwined in the Vine.
3.Floyd Cove (Guy Pierce/ Pat Stamile) - Born to Run (Stamile), Fringy (Stamile), New Paradigm (Stamile), and Blue Racer (Pierce/ Stamile).
4. Jamie Gossard - Heman had an impact on our red toothy plants.
5. Luddy Lambertson - Blue Hippo and Cerulean Warbler are in the background of many of our blue eyed plants.
6. Richard Norris - Clarification, Mary Lightfine, and Kermit's Scream.
7. Jack Carpenter - Treasure of the Southwest, Cosmic Kaliedoscope, and Our Friend Sally.
8. Mort Morss - Violet Victory
9. George Doorakian - Malachite Prism, Emerald Starburst, and Rose F. Kennedy (dip and tet).
While we used many of these plants for hybridizing with good success, many evergreen types either declined or died here due to severe winter weather. Only when the above plants were able to produce hardy seedlings when combined with our own plants, did we have success in bringing other genetics to our program. As an example, it took Gnashing of Teeth two generations to get hardy seedlings from it while Heartbeat of Heaven was able to produce hardy plants in one generation when combined with our hardy plants. Both Gnashing of Teeth and Heartbeat of Heaven were evergreen here, but Gnashing of Teeth was more tender. We bought many expensive plants that grew poorly here and did nothing to enhance our hybridizing program. We also bought some that although they grew poorly, were able to make excellent seedlings. We have found that trial and error was needed to find plants that grew well and produced good seedlings. Having a good base of hardy dormant plants from our own program allowed us to bring in other genetics and give us a good chance at a fancier yet hardy daylily.
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| Pinewood Green Flash (Phil Korth) |
7. What are some of your favorite daylily introductions?
Phil: This is a dangerous question for a hybridizer. I will give some of our best/favorites in the various colors we work with:
A. Pastels - Hailey Annabelle, Awaken the Dawn, June Wedding Vow, Big Yellow Doofus. Hailey Annabelle was introduced in 2016 but is still an exceptional flower with an edge that rivals any southern bred daylily.
B. Purples - Pinewood Moon Shadow, Dark Jubilee, Robe of Righteousness, Benjamin Andrew, and 2022 introductions Judgement Day and Royal Throne. The first four are currently sold out so apparently others like them as much as we do. One of our original goals in hybridizing was to get purple flowers with a big white edge and we started with Strutter's Ball (Moldovan) and Court Magician (Munson). Seeing spectacular flowers like Pinewood Moon Shadow, we realize we have been blessed to have accomplished that goal.
C. Eyes - Restore the Roar, Missing Waldo, Lord of Life, and Pinewood Shiner. These flowers add contrast and drama to the garden.
D. Reds - Harold Steen, Once and For All, Velvet Hammer, Eternal Crown, Gandalf's Ring, and future introduction 829-5. Harold Steen first bloomed in 2010 and was introduced in 2014 but is still sold out and we get good reports on this flower across the country. It is definitely one of our best.
E. Green - all diploids - Arno's Bow Tie, Pinewood Lily Pad, Pinewood Green Flash, Green Ghost, and Pinewood Holy Kiss. These diploids add a unique color to the garden as well as bi-color contrast. Pinewood Lily Pad is our favorite and is great in the garden and for hybridizing.
F. Blue Eyes - Luel loves working with blue eyes (daylily blue) and after many generations, we have some excellent dormant, hardy, and fancy blue eyed introductions with more to come. Some favorites are: Healing Waters, Pinewood Mirror Lake, Well of Salvation, Pool of Siloam, Sign of Jonah, and several potential introductions, 804-2, 804-6, and 819-1.
8. What are some of your favorite daylily gardens to visit?
Phil: As a northern hybridizer, we have a 3-4 week window to evaluate plants and make crosses. As such, we do not leave the house much to visit other daylily gardens during bloom season. Locally, we have enjoyed visits to Tom and Rosemary Kleinheinz in Madison, Wisconsin where they do a great job displaying daylilies in mature clumps. We went to Ohio Mecca several years ago and enjoyed all the gardens (Gossard, Holmes, Polston, Faulkner, and Bachman) that were blooming a week before our season started. We have also been to Florida twice and went during the week when few other visitors were there. All hosts were gracious and spent time with us including sharing pizza lunch with Ted and Susan Petit. Karol Emmerich's greenhouse is a delight in spring with beautiful flowers and a wonderful fragrance when the greenhouse contains the aroma of blooming daylilies.
Our best visits were by appointment when few other garden visitors/customers were there. We behaved as guests and were treated well by the garden host. When our hosts had time, they were always willing to share knowledge and show us plants they were excited about.
9. What are some of your favorite memories involved with daylilies?
Phil: We were able to start a daylily club in Green Bay in 1999 with Leo Bordeleau and several other fellow gardeners. It has been nice to share many years with some great people in the Green Bay area. Our club hosted region 2 meetings in 2004 and 2014 and I was chairman both times. Our club came together and put on great meetings. At that time, region 2 meetings typically had 200 people and had garden tours on Saturday and Sunday morning so we needed 6 or 7 gardens for tours. Our garden was a tour garden and it was fun hosting buses of people in our garden meeting many fellow gardeners. In 2014, I also recall Harold Steen (a fine gentleman from the Milwaukee area) sitting on our patio, admiring the flower named for himself. Daylilies can bring joy to people in a variety of ways.
I have also had the privilege of speaking to a good number of clubs around the country from Maine to Canada to Iowa. People have always been gracious and I have enjoyed those trips and hope the clubs enjoyed hearing about our program. My favorite was the Maine daylily society back in 2009 (?) or so. To keep costs down, I flew in on Friday and had Saturday to hang out with host Susan Shaw and family and see some sights in Camden, Maine. After my talk on Sunday, the club hosted a lobster boil and I was treated to fresh Maine lobster before my flight home. My wife was a little jealous as she was working in the garden back at home.
Now let's see some of Phil and Luel Korth's introductions:
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| Arno's Bow Tie (Korth) |
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| Green Ghost (Korth) |
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| Pinewood Green Flash (Korth) |
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| Dark Jubilee (Korth) |
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| Benjamin Andrew (Korth) |
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| Pinewood Moon Shadow (Korth) |
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| Well of Salvation (Korth) |
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| Sign of Jonah (Korth) |
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| Eternal Crown (Korth) |
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| Gandalf's Ring (Korth) |
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| Velvet Hammer (Korth) |
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| Telperion (Korth) |
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| Awaken the Dawn (Korth) |
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| June Wedding Vows (Korth) |
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| Lord of Life (Korth) |
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| Pinewood Shiner (Korth) |
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| Missing Waldo (Korth) |
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| Korth seedling 819-1 |
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| Korth seedling 804-2b |
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| Windows of Heaven (Korth) |
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| Korth seedling 908-3-1 |
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| Korth seedling 830-1 |
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| Korth seedling 829-5a |
