 |
| Dave Mussar seedling (June Mist X Undefinable) |
 |
| Dave Mussar seedling (Lady Barbara X Wacky Wednesday) |
I think I first got to know Dave Mussar through Facebook many years ago. Dave lives in Puslinch, Ontario, Canada. Probably a 3 to 4 hour drive from me. Dave and I have very similar climates and have enjoyed sharing daylilies back and forth over the past 5 to 6 years. I was fortunate to have Dave and his friends, Mike Georges and Bryan Culver stop by for a visit a couple years ago. It was a lot of fun catching up. I have done one interview with Dave some years back but a lot has changed with Dave's program since then and Dave was kind enough to do an updated interview. So with nothing further here it is:
 |
| Left to right: Bryan Culver, Dave Mussar, Curt Hanson, Bill Chambers, Mike Georges and Dan Hansen |
1. Refresh my memory, how many years in total have you been daylily hybridizing?
Dave: I first started seriously growing and hybridizing daylilies back in 2000. I always had some daylilies in the garden but they were mainly fulvas from the roadside, Stella or a bunch of unknown plants from garden centers or garage sales, etc. Many years earlier I collected orchids and did a bit of hybridizing with them. So when I was introduced to modern daylilies by my former neighbor Mike Georges, he gave me extra fans of new intros and pollen too. I started crossing right away. I knew immediately that I was hooked again and a new plant obsession began. With daylilies, being able to see the results of your crosses in 2 or 3 years and growing them outdoors was a big advantage compared to orchids.
2. What are some changes you've noticed in the daylily world as it pertains to the actual daylily itself?
Dave: Twenty plus years is a relatively short time in the grand scheme of things and yet I've witnessed many changes in the daylily world and the plant itself. A year or so after I started in, daylily rust became a huge issue. I think it reduced some of the southern migration of hybridizers and many chose to locate to areas where a little winter was experienced. The internet was relatively new in those days and social media was non-existent and that has greatly changed how we consume our passion with far fewer printed catalogs being distributed for one. We have seen the rise of many smaller programs and backyard hybridizers, which has led to a greater diversity in the daylily as breeders explored many more niches than the big name programs were able to do. As a result, daylilies have improved in leaps and bounds. We now have plants with fantastic teeth and tentacled edges that do not rely on southern heat to be seen. In that time, spiders, unusual forms and extra large blooms have all made significant advances. No longer is everybody breeding for 24" bagel forms! We have exceptionally tall daylilies that some need a stool to hybridize and rust resistant cultivars too.
Patterns have come a long way in the past 20 years and are now more stable in a wider variety of climate zones. Stripes and broken colors were non-existent 20 years ago and breeding in that area is exploding. Color changers are also a new innovation. I think we are seeing a renaissance in diploid breeding where not that long ago it looked like everybody was only working with tets. Cristates, both in the diploid and tetraploid form are advancing rapidly as are other sculpted forms. Doubles continue to evolve and perform better in the north these days. Polymerous daylilies are getting more attention as well. So many of these advances are the result of smaller, focused hybridizing programs, expanding the diversity of the daylily. All the while breeders are also working on color clarity, improvements in sun fastness, hardiness, branching and bud count too. No longer are breeders focused on daylilies for the masses but rather they are exploring a multitude of unique forms, types and situations to appeal to individual gardeners and I think the daylily is richer for it.
3. What type of hybridizing are you mainly focusing on these days and what drew you to want to explore it?
Dave: Focus is almost a laughable word when it comes to my program! There are so many areas that I would like to explore and it is hard to do justice to them. One main area is tetraploid stripes and broken colors (I see their patterns as being distinct from each other but of course am crossing them back and forth). I have been working toward spots since I began hybridizing and have been making some progress at the diploid level with several generations of Pitter Patter breeding and hope to be able to take them to tets at some point as well.
Since the chance finding of a seedling that became my Kendra Marie, I've been working on tet. cristates. There are a lot of people working on diploid cristates but relatively few with tets. and I think it is an exciting area to pursue. I Feel Fine and Esmund are two of my other cristate intros and I have quite a number of seedlings from these and other lines in the works.
In the north, our bloom season is short, basically starting around mid June and basically finished by the end of August if not sooner so anything that would extend the season would be useful. For quite a few years I've been working on extra early blooming tets. with the goal to have them bloom with or before Stella D'Oro, taller, larger blooms and preferably not just yellow. I've had some success in that area with plants like my Hillside Bright and Early, Get The Worm, Hillside Dark and Early and others. I have some seedlings that bloom the first week in June or about a week or two after our usual last frost date so that's about as early as I can hope for. Peak bloom here is about the third week in July for reference.
I find myself drawn to areas that few hybridizers have explored. Did you know that there are only 37 registered tetraploid polymerous daylilies with a frequency of 50% or higher and some of those rarely poly in my garden? I've been trying to convert a few of the better performing diploids to make progress in this area. Likewise, I'm fascinated with dark, near black scaped daylilies as they have a striking visual appearance even before the blooms open. There is work to be done on improving the range of color, form and size of the blooms as well. There are several good diploids to work with like this but only a handful of tetraploids, so another area ripe for development.
To this end, I started to learn how to do conversions about 9 years ago. It is a slow, time consuming and frustrating process with lots of failure but the few successes I've had along the way have given me some unique breeding tools to pursue some of the goals mentioned above. However, some conversions have sent me down other rabbit holes a bit further from my areas of focus, diluting my efforts. If you have a unique conversion, I think you need to use it to at least see where it can take the daylily next.
I continue to work with toothy forms, am working with the white daylily group to get whiter whites, do some patterned breeding, am doing a bit of work with species crossing them to both dips and tets, green throated tets. and exceptionally tall daylilies are being pursued. I will also get smitten by a pretty face and go off on a tangent there too. In short, I'm not very focused at all!!!
4. You are retired now.....is it harder to accomplish your goals, or do you find the extra time being retired allows you to focus more energy on daylily hybridizing?
Dave: I retired about 3.5 years ago now, hard to believe it has been that long! What I told people then is that I finally found the full time gardener I've needed for a long time. However I've come to realize that I actually need 2 or 3 of me to accomplish everything that needs to be done here. I spend a lot of time spreading pollen during bloom season, sometimes upwards of 5 hours daily. My philosophy is that if you don't make the cross and try to get seeds, you won't have them to plant. Not every cross takes and I use some difficult pollens too. I would rather have too many seeds and make difficult choices as to what to plant than to regret not having made important crosses. Unfortunately, I spend so much time and effort spreading pollen that the weeds get away from me. Our environment laws do not permit the many herbicides you have access to so weed removal is a manual process. I try to keep things in balance but the weeds always win.
 |
| Mike Georges and Dave Mussar |
5. Who's daylily program or programs have you found you have taken an increased interest in?
Dave: Since the beginning I've closely followed the programs of my mentors Bryan Culver and Mike Georges, we are close, talk, debate and kibitz often. Gil Stetler has retired from active hybridizing but he has had an influence in my interest in species and unusual forms. I've long followed Curt Hanson's program as he continues to innovate and go down the less travelled paths. Jamie Gossard has one of the most extensive programs and uses a lot of unique genetics from his own conversions. I've long believed that if you want to see unique and distinctive seedlings, you need to explore plants that are rare with unusual genetics. I admire and follow the work of people like Mike Derrow, Richard Norris, Rich Howard, Stuart Kendig, Phil Korth, Karol Emmerich, Mike Grossman, and Kathleen Nordstrom, yourself and many others. I also try to seek out lesser known hybridizers as their plants usually have limited distribution and so represent uncommon genetics.
6. Talk about starting your seeds out inside under the lights. What challenges have you encountered with this method?
Dave: Actually I've stopped starting seedlings under lights for the most part and use my light set ups to grow plants for conversion attempts or to try to get treated plants to bloom sooner. For the past few years I start potting up my seeds, without any soaking, just straight out of the fridge, sometime in March. The pots are moved right away to my still cold garage and placed on metal racks until they can be moved outdoors. Then the first week or two of April they are moved outdoors to the driveway to begin germinating sometimes while there is still the remnants of snowbanks beside the drive. As the days warm up, the seeds germinate naturally as they would if planted outdoors. Those seedlings can take frost and even freezing overnight. By early to mid-June they are large enough to move to where they will bloom in the field. I will put upwards of 30 seeds in a 5.5" square, 6" deep pot. Seedlings like depth for their roots and don't mind being crowded in a pot. They shake apart easily for transplanting. Starting my seeds this way let's me start many more than I could when limited by the amount of space I have under lights. I avoid all the issues with fungus gnats (I do put some chicken wire over my pots to keep squirrels from digging!) that are a problem indoors. Also I don't have the problem of trying to harden off indoor started seedlings that have to get used to the strength of the sun, wind and temperature extremes of outdoors. I can rely on April showers for watering and can hit them with a hose if needed and can fertilize the same way. It's worked well for me.
7. I see more young people coming into daylilies.....do you think this will increase the interest in daylily gardening and hybridizing in the years to come?
Dave: I hope so! It is challenging for young people to achieve home ownership as often both partners have to work to afford to do so. Then with young families, their time is divided as well. As cliche as it many sound, the youth are our future. I am encouraged that the youth of today have a greater environmental awareness and an interest in growing their own food and gardening in general. I think we all know, or have known hybridizing friends who have either passed away or have to limit or give up their gardens for health reasons and there will be many more as the years go on. I think it is incumbent upon us to pay it forward by fostering interest in daylilies as others had done for us. So share your plants, offer some seeds, let them hybridize a few plants, offer them some space to grow seedlings, etc. Not everything has to be a sale, there is room to invest in the future as well.
8. What are some of your best parents from your introductions for hybridizing?
Dave: For stripes and broken colors I've been using a lot of my seedlings from Undefinable (DeVito), Wacky Wednesday (Seifert), and Explosion in the Paint Factory (Howard) along with my new intro Just Clowning Around (Mussar) which has stripes on the sepals and my tet. conversion of my Cherry Stripes (Mussar). I've also found that some of my best broken patterned seedlings have come from crosses with my stippled lines, so I've been crossing broken patterns on Splatter (Mussar), Spots Before My Eye (Mussar) and A Hard Day's Starry Night (Mussar). This past summer I also crossed them on my Freckled Sunshine (Mussar) and Spot the Dot (Mussar) for the first time. On the diploid side, I've been using my Spots and Stripes (Mussar).
For cristates I've been using Kendra Marie (easier as a pollen parent than pod but I get a few pods each year), Esmund (Mussar) and I Feel Fine (Mussar). For extra earlies I've been using Hillside Dark and Early (Mussar), June Mist (Mussar), Getting Better (Mussar) and Hillside Bright and Early (Mussar). For toothies, I've been using Rosemary's Tango (Mussar), and Another One Bites The Dust (Mussar), Princess Mardo (Mussar) and Kim's Laughter (Mussar).
9. What are some of your favorite new introductions from other hybridizers?
Dave: Some things that were new or newer to the garden that got heavy use last summer included Paintball Party (Ridder), Richard J. Howard (Ridder), Needles in a Haystack (Kuzminski), Don Giovanni (Conway), Identity Complex (Hanson), Temple of Bacchus, Black Flame Dragon, Bonibrae Ebony Star (Matthie) and Lavender Fusion. I have some new ones coming from Phil Korth and Rich Howard next spring and am waiting to see what Curt Hanson and Jamie Gossard have coming out too. We are a bit limited here as not many sellers are willing to ship intos to Canada.
10. Now that the borders should open up, which daylily gardens do you hope to visit in the coming year?
Dave: Well, we will see how open the border gets and when. But as it has been a couple of years now I'd love to get back to Curt's and your place of course. I've long wanted to make the trek to Mike Derrow's and Richard Norris's gardens and perhaps some of the southern Ohio gardens. If we have a Region 4 garden tour, I would plan to get there too.
NOW SOME OF DAVE MUSSAR'S FANTASTIC DAYLILY SEEDLINGS:
 |
| Dave Mussar seedling (Spots Before My Eyes X Undefinable) |
 |
| Dave Mussar seedling (Architechtural Digest X Undefinable) |
 |
| Dave Mussar seedling (Beholder X Undefinable) |
 |
| Dave Mussar seedling (Spacecoast Freaky Tiki X Undefinable) |
 |
| Dave Mussar seedling (Diane Crawford X Tet. Cherry Stripes) |
 |
| Dave Mussar seedling (Clear Conscious X Explosion in the Paint Factory) |
 |
| Dave Mussar seedling (Explosion in the Paint Factory X Wacky Wednesday) |
 |
| Dave Mussar seedling ((English Garden X Wacky Wednesday) X Wacky Wednesday) |
 |
| Dave Mussar seedling (Lady Barbara X Wacky Wednesday) |
 |
| Dave Mussar seedling (Wacky Wednesday X David Mussar) |
 |
| Dave Mussar seedling ((Connect the Dots X Explosion in the Paint Factory) X Wacky Wednesday) |
 |
| Dave Mussar seedling (Dandelion Fluff X Wacky Wednesday) |
 |
| Dave Mussar seedling (Pitter Patter X Her Best Bloomers) |
 |
| Dave Mussar seedling ((Soli Deo Gloria X Clown Pants) X Just Clowning Around) |
 |
| Dave Mussar seedling (Splatter X Just Clowning Around) |
 |
| Dave Mussar seedling (Wallingford Woolly Bully X Heavenly New Frontiers) |
 |
| Dave Mussar seedling (I Feel Fine X Kendra Marie) |
 |
| Dave Mussar seedling (Kendra Marie X Heavenly New Frontiers) |
 |
| Dave Mussar seedling (Gaudeamus X Pit Bull Princess) |
 |
| Dave Mussar seedling (Iwanna Piranha X Heavenly New Frontier) |
AND NOW SOME OF DAVE'S FABULOUS INTRODUCTIONS!
 |
| Just Clowning Around (Dave Mussar 22) |
 |
| We The North (Dave Mussar 22) |
 |
| Augie's Baby (Dave Mussar 21) |
 |
| Esmund (Dave Mussar 21) |
 |
| Flash a Smile (Dave Mussar 21) |
 |
| Rosemary's Tango (Dave Mussar 21) |
 |
| Hillside Dark and Early (Dave Mussar 21) |
 |
| Spraypaint (Dave Mussar 20) |
 |
| Another One Bites The Dust (Dave Mussar 20) |
 |
| Freckled Sunshine (Dave Mussar 19) |
 |
| A Hard Day's Starry Night (Dave Mussar 18) |
 |
| Spots and Stripes (Dave Mussar 18) |
 |
| Spot the Dot (Dave Mussar 18) |
 |
| Dots Galore (Dave Mussar 16) |
 |
| Loretta The Stipples Queen (Dave Mussar 16) |
 |
| Kendra Marie (Dave Mussar 15) |
 |
| Cherry Stripes (Dave Mussar 14) |
 |
| Kim's Laughter (Dave Mussar 13) |
 |
| Spots Before My Eyes (Dave Mussar 13) |
 |
| Rosemary Mussar (Dave Mussar 13) |
 |
| Hillside Bright and Early (Dave Mussar 13) |
 |
| Splatter (Dave Mussar 11) |
 |
| Dave Mussar and his grandson, Esmund |
I really enjoyed your program Dave. Thank you so much for taking the time to share that with us all. I consider Dave one of the good Samaritans of the daylily world. He is a great person to talk daylilies with and always has the time to share his knowledge with newer daylily gardeners. As you can see Dave is getting ready to update his website with his newer introductions. To go to Dave's website log on to http://dave.mussar.com or just Google Dave Mussar daylilies. Dave does sell to the United States. All the above pictures are the property of Dave Mussar and use without prior consent is prohibited. Thanks again Dave for all your help. Stay tuned for our next segment.....I'm working on a purple daylily collection of pictures you are going to LOVE! Thanks for stopping by.
