After my struggles with growing the Big Sky Series of Echinaceas, I am trying to come up with my own plants which are more winter hardy and can tolerate wet winters. I am choosing for the plants based on their hardiness, branching, and color. I have finally found a very healthy Paradoxa seedling which also has the branching habits and toughness of the robust Purpurea plants. My main requirement for these plants is that they can tolerate wet conditions. I have found 2 plants that passed the toughness test so far. Only 1 of them passed my branching requirements. So....I have only 1 plant out of hundreds of seedlings I am working with further.
I'm wondering what the best strategy would be for me now. I am leaning towards taking cuttings of this plant right now and crossing these with several other echinacea plants I have. I would then plant those seeds and pick the healthiest plants again. I would keep doing this over and over and only choose the toughest plants. My goal is to have echinacea plants of different colors that are still as hardy as the original plants. I think keeping the focus on the toughness and winter hardiness of the plants is very important. This plant multiplies at the crown more than any other Paradoxa cross I've ever seen so I have a good opportunity to multiply it.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I'm doing this mainly for fun and out of frustration with plants which obviously were not up to par.
Echinacea
EM,
My strategy would be to multiply your one good plant asexually enough to get a pretty large growing of them and work from that as a base, selfing and outcrossing to get a lot of seedlings to work with. Have you tried growing echinaceas indoors under lights? Or do you have a greenhouse where you could grow them throughout the year? Since your one plant has already proven itself, it shouldn't hurt to coddle the cuttings from it.
ZM
How does E.tennesseensis do in your garden.
I take that it is a native of TN.
You may want to cross it into your seedlings to improve vigor.
E. tennesseensis does great. I have some I crossed with it, too. I'm crossing them all. I'm even growing E. paradoxa and it grows ok here too. There's just something genetically about some of the new hybrids that makes them weak. I think they should trial these better before releasing them.