Mid-America Garden: Iris Field Tour

All right today we are down in Oregon on an iris field trip and we are at Mid-America Gardens. Now if you don't already know who they are you have got to look them up you're going to lose your mind if you're into iris and even if you're not into iris when you look them up you're going to get into iris. So Thomas Johnson the owner is also the hybridizer and pretty much all of the varieties that he offers are his own breeding work and he's been breeding for 32 years. We were just talking to him up in the field and he's out there doing his magical things so we might catch up with him later but I also don't want to bug him because I know he's busy but he led us out here into the back field so this these are all um there are seedlings out here so these are like first and second year selections there are named varieties up above so we're going to go kind of poke around the field and see what we can learn and um you're this is a new source that you want to know about they're not new in business but they're probably new to you and they're I found them last year and ordered a whole bunch of beauty so back at home mine are just starting to bloom and now I get to see all of the possibilities so um yeah let's go see what is going on here okay so the first step in creating a new iris variety is to choose the two parents and so you have what is called a seed parent or a pod parent as they call them in the iris world and then you have the pollen parent and so typically the pollen parent is some kind of characteristic that you want to bring over the the kind of modeling some kind of the streaking or striping so I would collect the pollen from a flower out here in the field and I would bring it over and put it on to the parent that I wanted to make the seed and so wherever they have made the cross you can see these little white tickets are blowing in the wind and they're all over in the field and this is precious because this information tells who the two different parents were and all of this corresponds with the records that they have so the seed pod once it's successfully like pollination has happened the seed pod is going to continue to get bigger and bigger and bigger and eventually it's going to turn kind of a tan color it'll start to crack open and that means the seed is ripe so the seeds are going to get collected they're going to get dried they're going to get cleaned and then they're going to get sown in the autumn and they need to go through that kind of freezing and thawing so you want them to have nice cold weather through the winter and they're going to sprout that next spring so let's go look at some of the little baby seedlings that were from crosses made last year and you can see what they look like but these are all little baby iris seedlings so these are from crosses that thomas made last spring then the seed pods formed the seeds ripened he sowed them in the fall or like late fall early winter and they started to sprout early this spring and now they're big enough to transplant onto the field so this whole bed behind me is a variety called simply said crossed with romantic lead and so all of these little babies are from seeds that came out of that pod or a couple of pods now what's so cool is each one of them is going to be different from the others but you're going to see that most of the seedlings look similar to each other so they call them sister seedlings so let's go see what those look like and you can kind of start putting it together because once i saw that i'm like i get it this is amazing so this these guys it's hard to believe so those little tiny seedlings we just saw this is what they'll look like the next year so you can see the white flag marks where the new batch of crosses or the new kind of variety grouping so these are all what are called sister seedlings so you can see that if you kind of step back and look and then we get in close they are all different but you can see they have sort of similar traits so those are three different plants so you can see they do look like sisters so we've got this one and this one so they you know kind of there's in this grouping it seems like a purple and white combo we've got kind of a bluey purple and a kind of more raspberry purple but see how they are they're unique into themselves but then they also are all kind of related and then if you come down here we move out of that variety you see the new stake here in the ground and then this one we've got the combo of kind of oranges and this kind of maroon kind of purple and you can see all of the flowers are some version of that so some are really maroon some are really orangey peach and then some are a combo of both then you have some lighter ones but you can kind of see like see how they flow together and they look like they're related so this is totally different than how it is for dahlias or zinnias i wish they were like this because this is way cooler you can see that like oh gosh i like that that cross what's coming out of that is really beautiful so each one of these okay so that keeps going and going and then we get down here and here's a new one and so you can see this group we've got this kind of icy lavender and then we've got lots of like really intense veining so we've got that kind of purple white purple white and you can see that and look so we've got some where it's a more solid purple we have some where they're really intensely veined we've got some where they're very pale and then down here check this out they have it looks like someone just hit it with a paintbrush isn't that wild kind of speckled and spotted so again like related but their own unique self okay so just starting pouring rain but we're gonna go for it okay so you can see in this long bed you see all those orange flags so those are all the selections that he's made so in this group right here these are all sister seedlings and everywhere he's put an orange flag is the variety that he's selected so this must be a winner a keeper same with this one we've got orange flags here so when they go to dig these in the late summer they're only going to dig the ones with the flags and then those guys are going to then be moved along in the process and all the rest of them are going to get dug out and composted so people always say that when I'm roguing zinnias like how can you possibly throw them away or same with dahlias and I'm like it's easy but now that I stand in someone else's breeding field and I see all of these that are going to get thrown away that are so incredibly beautiful kind of makes my heart hurt like it's but you know what it's part of the process okay so where we had the flags so those ones were the keepers and so they get dug up and kept and everything else gets jumped and now these are the varieties that were keepers and this is probably I don't know how many years these he's been saving these a couple it seems like because there's multiple plants of them but each year he's going to be continuing to grow them out evaluate them and then if they continue to make the cut they are divided and multiplied so you can see this is a couple probably a couple of years and now here's a new variety and then here it starts a new variety and here starts a new variety so from the original cross all the way to it being something that we could order in our gardens if it makes the cut so thomas makes a thousand crosses every single year so think of and all the seeds that come from those crosses each pod could have 10 to 35 or 50 seeds in them so he's growing thousands and thousands of seedlings only a handful make the cut and then each year less and less of them are kept so by the time we get them it's seven to ten years down the line so a lot of people will say why does a new introduction cost so much money so the new variety when it hits the market why is it 75 because it took him 10 years of his life to bring that variety into the world and it every year it was observed and cared for and divided and replanted and nurtured and it stood the test of time and so by the time we get it it's definitely a winner so in the early the first couple of years when a new variety hits the market the price is the highest and then you'll see it starting to come down because stock gets multiplied and the novelty is slightly worn off but all of these guys are potentials that someday we might be able to order and grow in our gardens okay so the last step of the journey is they get their names so after they've passed all the tests and made it through all these years of selection i'm only pointing over there because i'm like and then it moves from that part to that part to that part and finally it gets its name and that means a variety is ready to go into the world so it changes from that funny number letter combo to actually being named so this is a variety called blazing orange and it's a beautiful kind of soft tangerine with this pretty kind of maroony brown throat over here we've got athena's robe i love this color combination this strange gold with the kind of smoky lavender with the brown edging and then the water droplets on it like are you kidding but it's also kind of electric we've got courageous one this is really pretty look at the coloring on that that grapey throat with that closed up buttercream top this one is bodacious beard a beautiful gold if you like the golds this one i like a lot this is divine enchantress so i'm really drawn to the peaches and the blushes and the champagne so i love the coloring on this but what i find really nice about it is see how small the flowers are they're much smaller than most irises i think this would be ideal for flower arranging because sometimes trying to incorporate a very large flower into an arrangement can be kind of difficult so you can see beyond here all the white little flat tags those are all named varieties and on and on and on so these are all varieties that are now available to us as home gardeners so it rotates every year what is going to be available but you have got to check out mid america they have so many beautiful varieties and in the colors i've never seen before the craziest combos are like fairy flowers so if you're into irises even if you're not into irises i think you're going to love their varieties so they have a beautiful website which has great information it talks about the parents so you can learn more about hybridizing if you want to to see what crosses were made to get a variety beautiful photography great descriptions that just make you want to order the variety so just be warned but if you can spring for it they have a really lovely big thick glossy printed catalog that they still do and i think it's like 15 18 bucks but if you're serious about iris and you're serious about ordering from them i would say the investment is totally worth it because you can just like curl up with a cup of tea or coffee or whatever by the fire in the winter and really think about what you want so i hope this new source is one that's going to bring you a lot of joy and that you can find some new varieties from them i am so excited to have discovered them last year i have a whole row of varieties blooming back at home just starting so after i get lots of inspiration and take notes on all the new ones i want to order we are going to go home and bask in the beauty of those so i hope you enjoyed this little tour