OT lilies blooming

This spring a friend of mine sent me some bulbs. This week the first one started to bloom.
Here are African Lady, a lily with L. nepalense blood:

All the flowers have been pollinated with exelent OT pollen from a friend of mine.

 

 

 

Pollination

The lilies have started to bloom in the greenhouse. Every day new flowers have opened and are ready to be pollinated. Most of them are asiatics but also Lankon are blooming. I'm not sure if I have any pollen that would give seeds with it. The first flowers are also loosing their petals and most of the seed pods are swelling. A Danish friend of mine sent me some pollen of John Lykkegaards hybrids and I have done some pollinations with that too.

This on are a lily that I got from a friend. It's taller in the greenhouse than out in the garden. I really love 1c lilies and hope for some exiting seedling from this
.

 

 

 This orange have been growing in my garden for some years but I can't remember where it comes from. So far no seed pods are swelling. It could be a triploid or a tetraploid. Today I pollinated it with some pollen from 4n asiatics.

The purple tango are a selected seedling from Lykkegaards seeds. In the garden it's more recurved than in the greenhouse.

In 2010 my wife and I where in Denmark for a vacation. The last day we where in Denmark we visited John Lykkegaard and his wife. John gave me some lilies, I'm quite sure that this one are one of them. I was really surprised when it opened and was not a tango. But it's a pure yellow 1c lily. I see many possibilities with it. All the pollen I use on it are from tango lilies.

 

 

The greenhouse so far

I knew already from the start that the greenhouse would be crowded this year and it's not easy to move in there.

 

This years seedlings are doing well and have been given some fertilizer but not so much. Last year many seedlings was growing bad and I suspect that they have had to strong solution of fertilizer in the water. This year I will be more careful. This is some of the seedlings:

 

 

And here are the rest of them.

 

Seedlings

A few years ago I purchased some seeds from Danish Iris and Lily Society. One of the crosses didn't had the cross written on the bag, it simply was written First Crown. First Crown is a OA (oriental Asiatic) and I was surprised someone had been able to get seeds on it. I just had to try these seeds.

The seeds was sown last year and after a while they germinated but the cotyledon didn't grew more than about 1 cm. Even after one month it was still that short so finally I put it in my fridge since it had germinated hypogeal. After some months it was taken out from there and produced normal leafs. But I had some problems with them and the leafs died back but the bulbs did look ok. After some time I decided to give them a new try and let them stay in the fridge some new months. This spring they where taken out from there again but I was not sure if they would sprout one more time. I was really happy seeing one small leaf on one of them. After one week 5 bulbs had one leaf each and where planted in a new pot with new soil in the greenhouse. I really hope they will have flowers within a few years, then I will know if they are from a cross with Orientals or asiatics. This is how they looks like now:
 

 

Latvian lily hybrids

The first time a tango lily bloomed was in a Latvian garden. That lily bloomed only that one year and never come back. But the grower was amazed seeing this unusual lily and used it's pollen on many of his other lilies. Thanks to him we still have tango lilies.

A few months after the visit to Latvia I got a package from Guntis. It contained lily bulbs from him and a few from a friend of him, Andris Krumins. I have already 2 hybrids from Andris in my garden and they are really beautiful. The first one is Ilga:

The second one is Mistika, a 1c yellow tango. I can't find any picture of it since I thought it was lost for me but last year I found it in my garden and this year it's growing in my greenhouse. This year I will take a picture of it.

The new hybrids from Andris are Novice:

 

And Ciganiete

Not all the bulbs from Guntis had a name since they where new seedlings that had not got a name yet.

                                                             This is 7G 157

                                                         This is Mara

                                  This one are one of my favorites, 6G 90, exelent fertile too.

                                                              This is 6G 238

                                                           This is Veja Valsis

                                                 This is 6G 204 together with Ilga

One other great lily 6G 139

                                                               This is Rakaris

                                                                This is 9G 26

                                                          And this is 6G 185

Lilygrowers in Latvia and their hybrids

In 2011 my wife and I went to Latvia for a holiday both for seeing this beautiful country and to visit 2 lily growers. One of them, Guntis Grants, I had been writing with a few weeks before we went there. He had invited us to his garden where he have his lily nursery. he have his own web site http://www.daugmaleslilijas.lv/en/en_index.htm.

We should also visit one other grower, Andris Krumins, but we never got there. When we arrived to Latvia’s capital city, Riga, we met Guntis and together we went to the botanical garden of Riga where it was held a lily show. Here are a few pictures from there:

After the show we went home to Guntis. He grows many lilies, mostly asiatics but also some trumpets and OTs. The next pictures here should have been from the nursery but I never took any pictures. I think it was since I was overwhelmed by all those lily flowers. Never in my life have I never ever seen so many lilies at one place, but also it had been a long day for us and it was a hot day. But I ordered some bulbs from Guntis that I wanted to use for breeding purpose and when they bloomed in my greenhouse last year many of them was photographed.

How I grow lilies from seeds

I know that many who sow large amounts of lily seeds sow the seeds directly in the boxes that they grow the seedlings in the whole growing season or directly in the ground. But I transplant my seedlings and they grow big during the season and blooms the year after. Why do I do this? Yes, it is because I save space and I think it's nice to deal with my seedlings. They are no more than I am able to transplant them all within a week or so.
 I sow my lily seeds two times, asiatics and seeds I'm not sure if they will germinate in January, and trumpets and trumpets x OTs late January/ early February since they grow faster. All my seeds are sown in pots, one cross in each pot.

 

When the seedlings starts to get their first true leaf I start to give a weak dose of fertilizer in the water.

 

My experience are that when the seedling have one or more true leafs they survive when transplanted. I usually transplant my seedlings in April.

 

 

My seedlings are transplanted in these boxes.

 

 

 

After a few weeks I start to fertilize the seedlings but every year it seems that I give them too much fertilizer. In July the seedlings have many leafs and it's not easy to avoid getting fertilizer on the leafs.

In August/ September I bring the boxes out from the greenhouse to stop their growth and start going dormant.

 

After the leafs have died back I plant them out in the garden.