Seasons finale

The final few Gladioli are now flowering, knocked back by the heat and the lack of rain, this tiny 40cm plant made it, it was found in amongst others and is very graceful.

The majority of Gladioli seed pods have been gathered, they ripen quickly and you need to be on your toes, as it doesn't take long for them to fully open and then there gone. Crocosmias take a lot longer and if I'm worried about rain and damp and they're getting close to ripening, i will cut the whole stem and put them in the greenhouse. Which will be the case this year.

Winter growing Gladioli are slowly emerging, but one surprise has been some tristis crosses. They initially grew for five months and then disappeared, but lo and behold they are up and growing brilliantly. So now I need to go back and check all the others, even those that had a full Summer growing season. Tristis characteristics coming through nicely on these.

Cracker

The season is slowly winding down, with the first seeds recovered, dried and bagged. Last years seedlings are putting on a late show, exciting, as they are all new to me, around 50 % will flower in their second year. It's easy to get excited but I really do need to reign myself in from using them for breeding. I fail usually, but I'm crossing for colour, not form until next year when they attain their full height. The small Prims tend to throw small Prims these days, so I have abit more confidence in the results in a couple of years time.

Cracker below is on the tall size, but the colours are beautiful.

Summer tristis

All of the seedlings sown and growing in the greenhouse are of mixed parentage, a fair few are of my summer Glad's fertilised using frozen G tristis pollen. Whether this has worked remained to be seen until last week. Although only five months of growing, a few had thrown small spikes up, these first year spikes are usually only have two to three buds on and really are more for fun to look at and quickly removed, they have no bearing on the plants final stature and flowering capabilities.

But then this turned up. Its my long flowering purple papilio hybrid crossed with tristis pollen.

It absolutely shines. So its one of a few in the seed pan, so more to flower next year. They will be field grown to see what I have in terms of height, habit and amount of flowers, we know its hardy but I'm very excited. On top of that it appears to be fertile, both flowers were crossed and at least on of the pods appears to be swelling.