Thumbs up for America's baby!

As you can see by the photo below, this new seedling has already earned a thumbs up!

This bloom is from a cross I made involving Jamie's Monkey Business x America.  It bloomed for the first time last December and at that time the blooms were more orange.  The first set of blooms also had dropped skirts instead of the stuffed skirts I'm seeing now.  This does not surprise me because often it takes several bloom cycles for a new double to either get its act together or not.  Sometimes they never improve and you have to decide to keep or pitch.

Before I take photos of a bloom I always take a picture of the label.  Several people have asked me how I label seedlings seeing how I'm growing out lots and lots of seedlings right now. Usually if I have less than ten seedlings from a cross I will hand label the seedlings when they are moved up to gallon size pots.  If I have more than that, I will run tags through a laser printer, assigning each seedling a unique ID.  I also print the date the seedling was moved up to the larger pot.  Here's what the tag for this featured seedling looks like:


Seedling #11 just had a mini flush of 7-8 blooms and I dusted all seven with pollen.  I'm hoping at least a couple crosses will take in this heat.


The blooms have sort of a velvety texture and are holding up exceptionally well in our 90+ heat.   Although I lost about half of the seedlings from the cross in the freeze, I still have a bunch more that have yet to bloom.  I'm looking forward to seeing what surprises the other seedlings may have in store for me.